Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Linked In Need to Think More

It's much easier to sell and promote something good than it is something bad. You'd think that was obvious, but apparently Linked In have spent so much time trying to sell, they have forgotten to look at what it is they are actually pushing you towards.

Every time I go onto Linked In from my phone, I get directed to a page that asks me to install their app. Yesterday I clicked to download it and got taken to the app page, which shows an average review score of 1.5 stars and is full of reviews talking about how useless it is.

Now surely someone at Linked In might have noticed that reviews for the app have been consistently terrible, and set in motion a better app? Or at the very least realised that because the mobile website does everything the app does, they don't need to hassle us with the install option (which only then reminds us how crap their app offering actually is).

Pushing us a weaker product has all the hallmarks of basing the strategy around a business objective not the end user.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a problem that is just too prevalent though. Too many clients forget that while getting more people to buy / visit / click in the short term will improve their numbers, will damage the brand in the long term. There are only a finite number of people, and if you alienate them by delivering less than you promise what are you going to do next?

It'd be interesting to see what would happen if a viable competitor for Linked In, with a more user friendly interface / functionality, popped onto the scene...

Rob Mortimer (aka Famous Rob) said...

Thanks for comment!

I agree, better to wait and get the product right. Or at the very least direct people to the better of them.

A good competitor to Linked In would be a very interesting thing, might kick them into fixing some of their issues!