Improving

a Product: LinkedIn

/u/bosseternal
Table of Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 3
Overview of LinkedIn .................................................................................................................................... 3
Providing Value to Members .............................................................................................................. 4
Problems and Challenges ................................................................................................................... 5
Which group offers the greatest return on investment? ............................................................................. 5
Feedback from Occasional Users ................................................................................................................. 6
Feedback Themes ......................................................................................................................................... 7
Reviewing Data ............................................................................................................................................. 7
Enhancements .................................................................................................................................... 8
Feedback Theme: Personalization ............................................................................................................ 8
Feedback Theme: Quality Connections .................................................................................................... 9
Prioritizing Enhancements ......................................................................................................................... 10
Running an Experiment .................................................................................................................... 11
Experiment Criteria .................................................................................................................................... 11
Metrics to Watch ........................................................................................................................................ 11
Validating Results .............................................................................................................................. 12
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 12

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Introduction

This exercise outlines a method for thinking through the product enhancement process from ideation to
validation.


Overview of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the worlds largest professional network, with a platform that connects over 467 million
professionals around the world. LinkedIns self-described value proposition is simple, connect to
opportunity.1

LinkedIn segments their audience into two groups, Members and Customers. Members use LinkedIns free
platform to connect with colleagues, expand their network, and advance their careers. Customers pay
LinkedIn to access powerful tools and features across three product lines.

Talent Solutions Recruiting, Learning, and Development
Marketing Solutions - Advertising
Premium Subscriptions Public Relations and Lead Generation

Figure 1: Q3 2016 Revenue Distribution

This exercise will focus on the Members audience. A healthy and engaged Member population is the
foundation of a successful social network, providing value to Customers and supporting LinkedIns
monetization strategy.

1
LinkedIn Q3 2016 Quarterly Earnings Report https://s21.q4cdn.com/738564050/files/doc_financials/quarterly/2016/2016.09.30-10-Q-
Project.pdf

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Providing Value to Members

A generous set of free features makes LinkedIn valuable to Members. Some features include:


Online resume/CV
Members can post their work experience, providing social and professional validation.


Connect with colleagues
Much like Facebooks Friends and Twitters Followers, LinkedIns Connections make it simple to stay in
touch with colleagues and expand a Members professional network.


Find new career opportunities
Recruiters and Hiring Managers who have purchased LinkedIns Talent Solutions product can find and
contact Members about new job openings.

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Problems and Challenges

Social networks like LinkedIn face two primary challenges: acquiring new users and continued engagement of
existing users. For this exercise, we will focus on improving existing user engagement.

While LinkedIn touts the fact that they have over 467 million accounts, only about 106 million accounts are
considered active (based on account activity within the past year). 2

To help focus our product enhancement efforts we need to segment our existing Member audience. One
method is based on level of activity. We will use three categories.

Power Users
Less than 14 days since last activity (5% of user population)

Occasional Users
14 365 days since last activity (15% of user population)

Inactive Users
More than 365 days since last activity (80% of user population)



Which group offers the greatest return on investment?

Power Users already engage fully with the platform.

Moving a percentage of Inactive Users to Occasional or Power Users would yield the most value, but this
group could be the most challenging to convert. LinkedIn does not have a reliable way of identifying and
counting duplicate, fraudulent, or deceased accounts.

Occasional Users maintain at least some level of engagement, so they are clearly deriving some value from the
platform. If we listen to user feedback and make some product enhancements, maybe we can convert a
portion of Occasional Users to Power Users.

We recommend focusing enhancement efforts on improving the Occasional User experience.

2
LinkedIn Q3 2016 Quarterly Earnings Report. https://s21.q4cdn.com/738564050/files/doc_financials/quarterly/2016/2016.09.30-10-Q-
Project.pdf

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Feedback from Occasional Users


I have a hard time remembering who my connections are or why were
connected.



I don't use it. I was getting creeped out every time I got an email that some
random acquaintance of mine viewed my profile.



Recruiter spam: head-hunting recruiters who have no idea about software
development. They match keywords on profiles to their stupid list. Very intrusive
and annoying given the fact that exactly none of them will lead to a job I
actually like.



A negative that I've dealt withgetting connection requests from people with
whom you aren't/don't want to be professionally associated. In my case, it's
mostly been friends, family, and acquaintances whose jobs have nothing to do
with engineering and/or who don't work at companies that have anything to do
with software, hardware, etc.

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Feedback Themes

The qualitative feedback we received from Occasional Users can be categorized into two themes, Personalization and
Quality Connections. Themes are a useful way of grouping together individual pieces of feedback, giving product managers
a greater sense of problem scale and helping to uncover root causes.



Reviewing Data

Qualitative feedback can help focus quantitative analysis. Conversely, quantitative analysis can help validate qualitative
feedback. In this example, the use of themes can help determine which metrics are relevant to user behavior.

For users who feel that LinkedIn is too impersonal, we may analyze the number of messages sent between connections
older than one year.

For users bothered by irrelevant messages and connection requests, we may analyze the engagement rate of messages or
connections received.

Enhancements


Assumptions

We assume that we have a wealth of qualitative feedback (user surveys, focus group results, etc.) and
quantitative data (analytics) and are reasonably confident we have properly validated our major problem
themes.


Now that we have some qualitative feedback and quantitative information about Occasional Users, we can
brainstorm some enhancement ideas to address their concerns and increase engagement.



Feedback Theme: Personalization

Secure Notes (Feature)
Give users a way to store additional information about their connections.

Example: Husband's name is David, met at SXSW 2016, big Louisville basketball fan

Primary Metric to Watch:
Feature Usage Rate

Risks: Need to ensure privacy, wary of info leaking through hacks

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Feedback Theme: Quality Connections

Feature Already Exists (Customer Education)
The ability to control the types of notifications you receive is a feature that already exists. Perhaps we do not
do a good job of promoting this functionality. We recommend a deeper UX dive, analyzing usage metrics and
workflows to determine if its too hard to find. From there we may choose to run an awareness campaign,
reconfigure default notification settings, or change the user interface.

Qualified Opportunities (Feature)
Allow Members to set requirements before a Customer can contact them about a career opportunity.

Example: Work with Ruby, NodeJS, located in Bay Area, Salary > $150k

Primary Metrics to Watch:
Feature Usage Rate
Longer Time on Site
Increased Engagement with Qualified Leads
Reduction in Customer Messages Received

Risks: Initial reduction in perceived candidate pool for Customer audience could be negative, but may result
in net increase in pre-qualified leads





Limit Connection Spam (Feature)
Similar to Qualified Opportunities, allow Members to set more detailed filters on the types of connections
they wish to receive (shared experience, location, within X connections, etc.).

Example: Only allow new connection requests from Product Managers in Nashville

Primary Metrics to Watch:
Feature Usage Rate
Decrease in Total Number of Connection Invitations
Increased Acceptance Rate of New Connections

Risks: If a user is too aggressive with their filters they could inadvertently shut themselves off from their
network and lose value in the product.

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Prioritizing Enhancements

Assumptions

This process assumes that each feature idea is technically feasible. Feasibility discussions require input
from engineering, implementation, and QA teams. It also assumes we can reasonably estimate impact on
revenue, with input from finance and sales teams.

Given internal time and resource constraints, we need to prioritize our list of new feature ideas to determine
the most strategically valuable feature to focus on. There are many prioritization methods and an
organization should never be constrained to a single method. For the purposes of this exercise were going to
use an Objective Scoring Model.

Objective Scoring provides a uniform, scalable method of weighing feature value vs. complexity and ensuring
features are aligned with company initiatives. Each new feature will be graded on a scale (1, 3, or 5; higher is
better) for the following six criteria:

Benefits
Increase Revenue What is the revenue potential of this feature?
Customer Value How valuable is this feature to customers?
Strategic Value How well does this feature align with our strategic vision?

Costs
Implementation Effort How hard will this be to implement?
Operational Costs Is this feature within our core competencies?
Risk How high are the risks for implementing this feature?

Working together with a diverse team of stakeholders, a collaborative discussion about each feature yields
the following results:

















Now that weve identified Qualified Opportunities as the most strategically valuable feature, we need to
devise an experiment to test this feature idea before considering a production deployment.

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Running an Experiment

Experiments are time-boxed initiatives designed to test a hypothesis. We believe that this new feature will
have a positive impact on the metrics we are trying to influence.

To test our hypothesis that the Qualified Opportunities feature is valuable, we need to define some criteria.

Experiment Criteria

Occasional Users who have low/no engagement with messages received on the platform
Statistically relevant sample size
90-day duration

Now that we have our sample set of users (Test Group), we need to identify the metrics we believe this
feature will impact positively.

Metrics to Watch

Feature Usage Rate
Increased Time on Site
Reduction in Customer Messages Received
Increased Engagement with Qualified Leads



Assumptions

Implementing this experiment assumes that we are already tracking these core metrics and have the
ability to A/B test in our production environment. Executing a successful experiment also assumes
assistance from other departments such as Marketing, Communications, and the Talent Solutions product
team.

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Validating Results

Assumptions

We have successfully completed our experiment and have enough statistically relevant data to compare
the Test Group against Control Group.

We analyze the data, comparing the core metrics between the Test and Control Groups.

We also follow up with Test Group participants for feedback.

If the results are negative or show negligible improvement, then we recommend either continuing to iterate
on the idea or discarding it.

If the results are positive with a demonstrable improvement, we recommend additional trials with a larger
user base or full scale deployment to production.

Conclusion

Great products solve real problems and provide tangible value to users. Every product manager should be
mindful of two key questions What problem are we trying to solve? And how will we know we are
successful? We answer those questions by talking to end users, asking good questions, tracking appropriate
metrics, and analyzing the data.

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