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LinkedIn Groups Onboarding
Driving engagement and growth for LinkedIn Groups
Overview
A redesigned onboarding experience for new members joining LinkedIn groups that aimed to provide more education and guidance around how to begin connecting with others and engaging within groups.
Timeline
Teammates
Contributions
2022
Design & Product
Growth Design, UX Research & Strategy
Initial Trigger
New members often missed group notifications and struggled to locate them. I designed a launchpad CTA that notified members in their home feed and nudged interaction, achieving a 60%+ click rate.
Coachmark
New members often struggled to understand the purpose of groups. I introduced a coach mark feature with a pulsing icon that guided them to the About page, clarifying group rules and value before engagement.
Topic Prompts
New members often struggled to start engaging in groups. I introduced topic prompts to help members select their interests, directing them to a feed of trending conversations for inspiration to make their first post.
Testimonials
New members often struggled to see the value of group engagement. I proposed testimonial videos featuring current members and admins sharing the benefits of joining and participating in groups.
Testimonials MVP
With time constraints and engineering limitations, I sourced and produced 5 user testimonial videos that were deployed within LinkedIn Inmail messages and email CTA's. TLDR; I developed a no-code solution that was launched
If I had more time, some metrics that I would've tracked to gauge impact would include click-through rates (CTR) on InMail and email CTAs, engagement rates on the videos (e.g., watch time, drop-off points), conversion rates from recipients who viewed the videos and overall engagement within groups
What was the initial problem?
Blue-collar workers make up 80% of the global workforce, yet remain an untapped market for LinkedIn. To engage this segment, LinkedIn launched 30+ groups for various occupations, but over 50% of members didn’t return after their first visit.
Why? Through user research I learned that it was:
01.
New members often get confused on the purpose and value of engaging in groups
02.
New members often don’t know how to begin contributing to groups
Lack of guidance
How was guidance provided?
After finding that members who dropped off often lacked clarity on group purpose and contribution, I conducted an experience audit of the current onboarding to assess our guidance for new members. Here were my findings:
Unclear welcome notifications ​
Due to the high volume of notifications members already receive and the lack of clarity in messaging, new member miss these notifications altogether.
Vague and generic copy:
Members who join a group receive a standardized pop-up notification about its purpose, leading to confusion and lack of clarity on how to begin engaging.
Unfamiliarity with content:
While nudges encourage new members to post content, they often feel hesitant to take that first step unless they spend time browsing the feed and familiarizing themselves with the content.
Defining the pain points I could solve for through design
01.
To help the new member understand the group rules and regulations
02.
To guide the member to begin engaging with content (reacting to posts & leaving comments)
03.
To guide the member to create their first post and begin engaging with other group members.
Learning to utilize LinkedIn's Design System
To inform my designs, I analyzed various onboarding touch points within LinkedIn’s mobile app. I selected several features to incorporate that were successful in effectively introducing and educating members on new features. These were some examples:
Coachmark
Infrequent member prompts
Launchpad Notifications
What did some early concepts look like?
At the beginning of this stage, my goal was to design as many growth onboarding features to help members feel acclimated to groups AND drive engagement.
Some of the concepts were more experimental. Ultimately I did not move forward with many due to engineering restrictions or design guardrails for a mobile experience. This iterative process helped me hone in on one solution.
Too much real estate
Too much real estate
High Engineering Effort
The Final Solution
Next Steps?
My goal with creating a revised onboarding experience was to help get new members more acclimated to groups, boosting confidence to take their first step towards contributing within groups. For the concepts that weren't shipped, with more time, I would have:
01.
Run a series of lightweight usability tests to gather concrete feedback on the experience.
02.
Key metrics that I would've considered would include: Click through rate, Time to First Action, Drop-Off Funnels, Feature Adoption Rate, etc.
All in all this was my first deep dive exploring growth design, and I learned so much from my incredible team at LinkedIn. This experience changed how design can leave a tangible impact on a growing venture.
design by Mita Elan © 2024​