Top 5 criteria for evaluating sharing tools like AddThis, Add To Any, etc.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been evaluating which social media sharing tool is the best for client’s sites. You have probably clicked on a sharing tool, or at the very least seen one (look to the right of this article and you will see a red box with a white “+” in it. That’s an AddThis widget). Before getting into the criteria for selecting a sharing tool, let me address why it is important to have sharing tools on your site. The answer is “Friction”, or more accurately “To Reduce Friction”. The more difficult it is to share your content via social media tools, the more friction you are introducing into your social media process, and the less sharing will take place. Social Media sharing tools are a great way to reduce friction.

While I have historically used AddThis, it is not the only option. You can also use Share This, Add To Any or custom build your sharing tools. To decide which is best, here are 5 key evaluation criteria in order of importance:

1. Cross browser compatibility – i.e. is the widget available and fully functional across browsers (IE, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.)
2. Configurability - i.e. can the look and feel of the widget be configured with different icon types, background images, icons added, etc.
3. Usability / Look and feel - i.e. is the tool easy to use. If the tool has a high level of configurability, this is less important.
4. Analytics integration – i.e. can the widget actions be integrated into an analytics tracking package.
5. Network depth – i.e. number of available networks to share with. This is important, but if you have the top 10 networks, you are pretty much covered.

After a detailed evaluation, the choice has boiled down to AddThis or developing a custom sharing widget. In most scenarios, AddThis will work perfectly. AddThis is cross browser compatible,  tremendously configurable (you can change the UI completely), supports analytics (AddThis analytics and Google Analytics integration), and has the leading number of networks. For the small percentage of use cases where it does not work, custom development (or an extension of AddThis) will be the way to go.

2 Responses to “Top 5 criteria for evaluating sharing tools like AddThis, Add To Any, etc.”

1. Tweets that mention Top 5 criteria for evaluating sharing tools like AddThis, Add To Any, etc. | grahamlubie.com -- Topsy.com says:

   May 3, 2010 at 8:58 am

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   October 18, 2010 at 10:09 am

   [...] Related stories: Improving Impact through Knowledge Sharing for Research Top 5 Criteria for Evaluating Sharing Tools [...]