Pixelrage.net

Have you ever attempted to create a group on LinkedIn? I’ve done so today, and man, was I furious. Here’s the premise: you have to fill out an ENTIRE page of information about the group. Normally, I’m not one to be lazy about the “group description” field, so I’ll take my time out to put something significant and compelling in there. Once the entire form was completed, I hit submit and got a refresh of the screen with red text saying “Group name is not available.” Great. Thanks.

So, back to the drawing board. I came up with an alternate name. That wasn’t available either. I tried another. Nope, not available. My blood pressure started to rise. I tried at least five other alternate names for my group, and not a single one of them were available.

Here in 2009, we kind of expect these things to be AJAX’ed. You know, like, type in a username and a little script to the right of the field will display a green check mark with an “Available!” indicator, or a red X signifying that the username is already taken. Why on Earth does a HUGE-mongous site like LinkedIn not have this capability? It’s frustrating, obnoxious and self-defeating for their users. What was my end result? I gave up and clicked the “close” button on my browser. I have better things to do with my time than sit there and mindlessly type in group names, which are probably all being cybersquatted and not used, anyway.

Think of your visitors when you create this functionality on your website. Always keep the “frustration factor” in mind, it’s just good business practice. Otherwise, you’ll encounter users like me who simply won’t give you the time or effort anymore.