Mia Krysa

Goodreads is a well-known book-tracking platform for book lovers. It’s the most popular platform of its kind and serves as a place for organizing, book reviews, recommendations, and more. Despite its popularity, many users find it cluttered, unorganized, and hard to navigate. This case study explores the research conducted in evaluating Goodreads’ strengths and weaknesses to suggest a more user-friendly design. 

At First Glance 

The first step in the site evaluation process was simply to evaluate. It was important to take note of common issues and research the problems that users were having on a day-to-day basis. Upon immediate inspection, the website felt cluttered and disorganized and had an overwhelming navigation center. There were irrelevant pop-up ads and glitches with the reading challenge, a popular feature that many users like to participate in. Goodreads and its competitors were also researched in this step. Even though Goodreads is the most popular, it lacks up-to-date features that platforms like StoryGraph use: the ability to make ½ star ratings and book recommendations based on your mood, to name a few. 

From the User’s Perspective

Next, personas were created to imagine the different kinds of users that use Goodreads. Also, interviews and surveys were made to learn what users liked and disliked about Goodreads. Most often, users liked the book-tracking and organizational features but disliked its outdated design and lack of personalized recommendations. 

Along with the interviews and surveys, a card-sorting test was conducted to help re-work the navigation center. Many of the pages listed in the Goodreads navigation center were repetitive, unclear, and just didn’t make sense. Users were given the freedom to sort the pages in categories where they saw fit, and patterns were recorded to then come up with a navigation center that would make sense to most people. 

Goodreads’ Usability 

While the website seems like it’d be easy to navigate, a heuristic evaluation showed the opposite. The site is over-complicated, and the navigation center continues to disappoint. A usability test was also conducted, and results showed that users who were familiar with Goodreads had learned to navigate around the flaws, whereas users who weren’t so familiar with the platform struggled altogether. 

Suggestions for Goodreads 

After this 6-week evaluation, some suggestions are definitely in order. 

• Goodreads needs a dedicated “Trending Now” section, instead of plopping new books on all kinds of pages, with no theme or organization 
• Incorporate AI into their recommendations like other platforms to give a more personalized feel
• Reduce ads (or completely get rid of them!) as they’re messy and distracting 
• Put more time and effort into the back-end of the platform to reduce issues that users are experiencing with website glitches and their devices not syncing 
• Review filtering should be improved so users can filter through the kinds of reviews they want to see and add a ½ star option for more accurate ratings 
• Market less towards authors and more towards readers 
• Combine pages where seen fit. There are too many pages that repeat the same information in a different way 
• Friend activity tracking should be more accessible and designed less like a social media feed 
• Updated design for a modern, cleaner feel 

Conclusion 

This project combined various UX research methods to suggest a complete website redesign of Goodreads. In the end, what matters most is that Goodreads prioritizes its readers. Users want to feel seen, heard, and listened to, and Goodreads is not doing that. With a better design, condensed navigation, and more updated and personalized features, it could become a platform that readers truly enjoy. 

Below is the final report.