Goodreads UX: indispensable, but unsatisfying

Lately, I’ve been channeling my inner middle schooler and devouring books. I remember when I would load up on six or seven hardbacks from the library, only to return for more within a week and a half. I would keep track of my reads in a spiral bound notebook, rating each books’ merit in gel pen hearts.

Thanks to the world slowing down a bit (just a bit) under the threat of COVID, lots of lapsed readers are hitting the books once again. Today there are better ways to track and review books, even if I find myself missing the sparkly charm of gel pens. That’s just me. The most popular method by far is Goodreads, a platform that boasts approximately 90 million users. In some instances, glowing reviews on Goodreads outweigh even the most scathing of New York Times editorials.

Considering all this, Goodreads must be beloved by bookworms, authors, and the growing community of book influencers. But that isn’t the case. Goodreads is used grudgingly–users log on with the expectation of usability issues. They find the interface frustrating and boring. They find it inefficient and outdated. And yet they continually use it because there’s little choice otherwise.

Because of its early start, having launched in 2006, Goodreads was able to establish itself as the place to discover and review books. After being acquired by Amazon in 2013, users expected change, even welcomed it… but the early aughts aesthetic and beige background remains to this day. Goodreads has a captive audience. It doesn’t need to change since no other platform has been able to usurp its dedicated community. Even so, that community is getting frustrated and–rightfully–expecting more out of the Goodreads user experience.

The complacency of Goodreads

At first, the 2006 look is nostalgic, charming. The serif font and busy interface harkens back to early social media where we sorted our friends into a top ten hierarchy. (Yes, you can decide who your top friends are on Goodreads.) Browsing through your bookshelves feels like hopping into the internal catalog of the local library, a rather unappealing experience. Digging into the community tab is downright esoteric if you’re not in the know. Case studies like this one by Debanjan Chowdhury have revealed that Quotes, Quizzes, Trivia, Creative Writing, Ask the Author, and Giveaways nestled under the Community tab to be confusing and rarely utilized.

This is all functional, but in the way an old, temperamental copy machine is–it’s likely to breakdown, have indecipherable errors. But you don’t replace it because it gets the job done.

Goodreads users wish for enhanced functionality and features that have become standard in modern apps like a dark mode. Pain points that I have run into personally include, but are not limited to:

• User-made shelves cannot be custom formatted. They are lowercase and include dashes instead of spaces. (i.e. “did-not-finish” vs “Did Not Finish”)

• There is no embedded “Did Not Finish” shelf.

• On mobile, giving up on a book is an arduous process. Moving it from “Currently Reading” to any other shelf takes several steps.

• The mobile experience is markedly different from the web experience.

• Adding reading dates requires deleting some information:

These are all issues that would be revealed through a basic UX health check. They can be fixed relatively quickly, and would enhance the quality of life for those aforementioned 90 million users. So why don’t the surely talented user experience folks behind the Goodreads interface advocate for the user?

Complacency, probably.

Even when competition has stepped up with sleek, modern interfaces and a more detailed, humanistic recommendation scheme, Goodreads has remained the favorite of avid readers. The StoryGraph offers more personalized recommendations and reading data, all the while understanding what a stranglehold Goodreads has on the bookish community. You can import your Goodreads data directly into The StoryGraph if you’re looking to cut ties with Mr. Bezos.

Furthermore, The StoryGraph offers a public roadmap in the form of a kanban board, showing short-, medium-, and long-term goals that can be publicly reviewed and commented on. Nadia Odunayo and Rob Frelow, the team who built and now run StoryGraph, have a dark mode on the way, along with other user-suggested quality of life updates. Goodreads has a Community ideas page that scrolls on and on, without any real interaction from site administrators. When Goodreads ventured to make some aesthetic updates, the beta recieved mixed reviews and failed to address some of the most asked-after updates. (Where are the half stars, Amazon?)

But Goodreads remains the largest online community for readers and book recommendations. That said, will it be the best if it continues to neglect its user experience?

A study in bad UX

StoryGraph is creating goodwill with its users by providing this level of transparency. Goodreads is banking on its history as the main place to find your next read. Ultimately, time will reveal which is the better strategy, but it baffles me as to why Goodreads doesn’t just do better. It has the resources and capacity to do so. Yes, there are those who feel the platform should remain its classic, barebones self. But the current form of Goodreads is already suffering from feature bloat with that weird Community tab and a clunky social media experience.

This is why, as mentioned before, Goodreads has become a favorite case study of fledging UXers. Dribbble is rife with Goodreads redesigns because its lackluster interface is easy to fix and iterate on. Goodreads redesigns frequently center around

• Modernizing the aesthetic

• Focus on visual design (genre icons, list icons, etc.)

• Creating interactive carousels of book covers

• Making an experience more focused on the reader vs the community

• Cutting down on editorial/news content

Its serpentine information architecture can be rerouted. It can be made better.

But until Goodreads feels threatened by the likes of The StoryGraph or other competitors, the platform seems likely to remain complacent with the current state of its user experience. Which means the only updated Goodreads designs you’ll see will be posted here on Medium.