In this paper we study the best constant of the Sobolev trace embedding $H^{1}(\Omega)\to L^{2}(\partial\Omega)$, where $\Omega$ is a bounded smooth domain in $\RR^N$. We find a formula for the first variation of the best constant with respect to the domain. As a consequence, we prove that the ball is a critical domain when we consider deformations that preserve volume.