As members of the book-loving community, Goodreads is one of those sites that you might visit frequently. We can use it to keep track of our reading, set goals for the year, see what’s new and popular, post reviews, see what other people are reading, etc. If you are anything like me, you might actually enjoy this site a lot; but we have to be completely honest about it: it could be better. And when I say it could be better, I mean there are some updates it desperately needs to function better. Here are five things that could be improved about Goodreads that would make for an altogether more enjoyable experience:
1. About that rating system
A star rating system is not unusual to have for anything that can be rated, but it gets complicated when you can only give full stars. Sometimes a book is good and it definitely (in our humble opinion) deserves more than four stars…but is it really a five-star read? Some other times we might not enjoy a book so much but a two-star rating seems harsh and three feels like pushing it. Being able to give a half star would be perfect for these kinds of situations. It is something that Goodreads users have requested almost as much as Twitter users with that “Edit” button. Please just give us half stars!!
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2. The Search Engine
You know that thing Goodreads does where you type out half the first word of a title and it shows you the exact book you want but by the time you realize it is right there you already typed out the rest of the title and suddenly the book you want is not showing up anymore? Or the thing where if you have a tiny typo on the title there is no chance in hell it is going to pop-up? Yeah, what’s up with that?
The search engine needs some serious work.
3. Why is it so hard to add friends?
This is a problem similar to the last one, but it concerns the users rather than the books. Not only can there be many different people with the same user name, which can make finding someone in particular very hard if they have a common username; but also, just like the book titles, if you misspell it you’re never going to find it. The least we can ask for is for a “suggested” list.
Accepting friend on the app also seems especially impossible since it glitches incessantly. You can tap that green check a thousand times and still not know if that user is now your friend or not.
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4. The Recommendations Section
This section was actually just recently updated, and I’ll admit, it seems much better than it was before (kudos for that one, Goodreads). It is not only more navigable but it also recommends some new releases. But, like everything in life, it can still definitely be improved. Even though I have almost 400 books on my “Read” shelf and almost 100 on my “Want to Read,” they have been recommending me the same couple of books ever since I joined the site back in 2014. I have even marked them as “not interested,” but they are nothing if not persistent because before I know it those books are back on the recommended. Nothing against those books, obviously, but some work can definitely be done to improve your algorithm depending on the books you add to those shelves, as well as how you rate the books you read. Maybe it can even recommend to you some users that rate books similarly as you so you can see what else they like.
5. The comment section
Why is the comment section…like that? If you have ever posted any sort of update on your Goodreads, chances are that you have gotten a comment on it. But it is hard to reply directly to that comment on the website if you’re just browsing your feed and virtually impossible to do it on the app (if there is a way I simply have not found it). And if you do manage to reply to a comment, instead of starting a thread inside of it, it looks like every other comment except with a “replied” section a the beginning, which makes it hard to maintain conversations and to know who is responding to who. It would be much better if the like and reply buttons for each comment were more easily accessible and there were threads instead of every comment just appearing on chronological order.
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These things can seem very trivial, and if I’m completely honest they probably are, but they are also things that (if changed) could greatly improve the user experience, which is something that every website should strive to do. If any Goodreads executive is reading this, please hire me, I have more ideas!