My first impression when visiting the website is: what exactly does this service do/provide? What is their primary focus? What specialized function can they provide to me, the user? I know that GoodReads is concerned with books, yes, this is obvious. From my perspective, the site attempts to connect the user with new books that they might not have thought to try on their own by collecting the user’s reading preferences and making educated recommendations based on those specified preferences. Without “rating” any books, GoodReads is unable to offer recommendations, although given the initial genre-specific, preferences setup phase you’d think the first thing the service should provide you with is a short list of recommended titles.
A secondary function of the service is to connect other users/readers with each other and allow them to look at each other’s “bookshelf,” what they’re reading, what’s garnering attention, etc. An equivalent might be a retail shopping site’s “what’s trending” section or something similar. It’s hard to tell how important this feature is to the desirability of the site but it is something that makes GoodReads stand out from its competitors, which could be useful in its marketability. In a similar vein, GoodReads implements a reading tracking function to its service, to encourage healthy reading habits and push its users to consume more books. This may be another example of functionality that could be used to GR’s advantage/something that could separate it from it’s competitors.
More than anything else, there needs to be a major shift in the visual presentation of information, in addition to some feature/functionality changes. There’s a substantial amount of content provided by the site and it seems as if they’re trying to push it on the user all at once. An astute critique from a former Iron Yard student noted that the site lacks “hierarchy,” manifested through a somewhat clumsy approach to information display. This can be solved by giving the content room to “breathe” and by establishing a clear hierarchy of information.
My general thought about how to revise the layout is to model the redesign on the extremely popular movie-viewing platform: Netflix. With an exceptionally clear organizational structure, genre-specific recommendation functionality, Netflix is easy-to-navigate and quick-to use and as a result gained a vast and dedicated user-base. With alterations in response to the aforementioned impressions and critique of the current platform, GoodReads could become a much more accessible service.
- Leader of its service type/kind
- Pre-existing user-base
- Confusing layout
- Lack of information hierarchy
- Free service implies advertisements (super distracting/annoying)
- Hard to tell exactly what it is that the site does
- Too many options, overwhelming
- Redesign of content so that is easier to read and navigate
- Large, hero image slider with current, trending books/titles
- Remove multi-columned layout, especially for the densely-packed information/content
- Big, bold, easy-to-read descriptions of the site and its functionality with each step
- Stronger integration with e-books sellers
- Narrow functionality to its bare essentials, focus on what it’s doing (or can do) best
- Loss of user-base without updating platform
- Loss of interest in its services
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