When Will LinkedIn Get Serious About Usability and UX?
LinkedIn has achieved something remarkable, becoming the digital place we all turn for our professional social networking, job hunts and career information. For this reason, it is well past time for LinkedIn to get serious about usability and user experience.
I'd like to claim that if LinkedIn does not improve its usability, it is running the risk of being "Monstered" by some other more nimble and innovative professional networking platform, but that seems unlikely. LinkedIn would be difficult to replace at this point because, like all social networks, once individuals have established their social graphs, they are not inclined to move them.
So instead of discussing the risk that LinkedIn may or may not face with its mediocre user experience, let's instead speak of LinkedIn's lost opportunity to claim even greater chunks of users' time. What could LinkedIn achieve in terms of engagement, daily use and advertising revenue if the company improved its Web site and mobile applications?
I am sure you have your list of annoyances or a wish list of improvements for LinkedIn, but mine only seems to grow.
- LinkedIn apps (at least on Android) are slow and buggy. I basically find the LinkedIn app unusable and have been gravitating to the company's mobile site, instead. It takes a lengthy period of time for anything to load in the app, and once it does, the app is missing functionality we have come to expect on the site, such as being able to "like" comments on long-form posts or reply to comments in threaded conversations. And administering a community on mobile? Forget about it! Meanwhile, LinkedIn's new Connected app is worthwhile (although why it is a standalone app rather than essential functionality in the core LinkedIn app is unclear), but it crashes on me frequently and is noisy, not permitting user control over types of updates. (Hint for LinkedIn: I do not need to see a list of the 10 birthdays for people I used to work with eight years ago.)
- LinkedIn Communities are difficult to administer: It is no wonder so many LinkedIn Communities fail to get any critical mass. They are difficult to administer, with simple tasks like approving new members or banning spammers made onerous. And for community members, the experience isn't much better. I am often amazed at how many Communities I have joined, how few have any value and how little engagement there is in most.
- Possibly valuable features never get fully exploited: I liked the idea of endorsements at first, because I thought they could be valuable signals for search and discovery. (Imagine being able to find the most frequently recognized and endorsed person for "content marketing" or "influence marketing" in Cleveland, IBM or among your connections.) Maybe that feature is a Premium benefit and I just don't know it, but I have no idea if all those Endorsement clicks I have made and collected have any value whatsoever. Then there's the new "Keep in Touch" box, which would be a great idea for tracking changes with your connections if only LinkedIn stopped showing me the same updates time and again, no matter how often I click "skip." As for the long-form post functionality, LinkedIn is smart to have added this, putting the social network in competition with sites like Medium for the aggregation of free content, but why is the functionality so primitive? Any blogging platform that makes Blogger look cutting edge has a serious problem--where is the HTML editing, spellcheck, image formatting control and other basic features bloggers have come to expect years ago? And why can't I enter the keywords I want rather than relying on what LinkedIn gives me. (For example, "LinkedIn" is not a keyword I can use to meta-tag this post, and my request to add "sharing economy" as a tag has been thus far ignored.)
I love LinkedIn and find I spend more time with it now than I did three years ago, but the increase in time has not necessarily brought an increase in satisfaction. It seems every click and every page causes me to wonder why LinkedIn isn't better, and it leaves me wondering what kind of money LinkedIn is "leaving on the table" because it has not taken user experience and usability more seriously.
How about you? Do you disagree, or do you feel the same way? What are some ways LinkedIn frustrates you or you would like to see the platform improve?
Reassuringly expensive LinkedIn coach.
10 年Strongly agree with everything you've said (and with all of the comments) Augie Ray. Of course, if LinkedIn had competitors, many of these deficiencies would be gone. I run a bunch of Groups and the way that LinkedIn have treated/continues to treat the so-called "Owners" leaves much to be desired. Making them difficult to run directly factors into the Group experience, SWAM is a good example. My favorite place to check in and discuss LinkedIn is a Google+ Group. Enough said. Endorsements could be so much more and there's a pattern here - LinkedIn's unwillingness (or inability, I say the former) to share more actionable data. Depressingly, they're going in the opposite direction - by recently limiting search of non-premium members. Want basic data? Pay for it. Want insights? Use 3rd party apps (FriendCheck ios app, Content Harmony by Sharemetric etc). As you say, money left on the table. LinkedIn is a useful, capable and good platform, it's a shame it can't be great.
Acting Superintendent, Bureau of Urban Forestry at City and County of San Francisco
10 年Hear, hear. LinkedIn would be so cutting edge with its interface if it were 2010. But we expect more because we get more with other platforms. You're right that LinkedIn is unlikely to quickly lose users, especially the stodgy users it has, but it could do so much more.
Senior Analyst (ERP, PLM, supply chain, project management, eCommerce)
10 年LinkedIn's main advantage is also it's most important disadvantage : it's supposed to be a "professional network" The problem is that many of its users are not professional. From execs who comment or share "solve if you're a genius" posts to incompetent marketers who share the same content over and over again on groups that have nothing to do with it and finally those who comment on everything including on how nice women look in their profile pictures (yes, I know such an individual ) My point is that LinkedIn can make lots of changes but i don't see how they could change the behaviour of their users. What I propose is that LinkedIn allows users to rate other users not through recommendations and endorsements which are always positive but through a like/dislike system (like YouTube) which should also give the option of anonymity (like GlassDoor) because no one will publicly criticize his or her boss.
Digital Healthcare Strategist | Customer Experience Leader | Omnichannel Marketer | HBA Board Member | Speaker
10 年You've hit the nail in the head. I've felt for the longest time that the app vs PC experience doesn't have that seamless integration that it should, industry leader or not. I always feel that I'm looking for something, trying to find information or functionality that I learn and then moves, but the version updates don't seem to make it easier or better to do basic things. While I'm a user, there is definitely a cost associated; I spend less time with the network than I could.
Facilitator. Coach. Autistic. #SpikyTeams
10 年Agree completely. I use it more and have invested more time into it, but it comes at the cost of increasingly trying to do the minimum each time. I also run a community on social customer care (it may well be the biggest on the subject which I started back in 2009). It now has over 18k members, with a further 2k waiting to join. But I am looking to move the community to another platform that offers me the ability to more easily manage the increasing number of spammers, that has a better way to manage new joiners or requests to join, that ultimately offers the users more tools to engage with each other in a more productive way. I would feel a real sense of loss at doing this, as I started the community from nothing, but if you are going to offer this 'service', you do need at some point to actually invest in it, rather than treat it as a placeholder or a means to an end (whatever that end may be).