If you’re using LinkedIn as part of your social media marketing program – or just have an interest in this stuff – you’ll want to take a peek behind the curtain. The latest post on LinkedIn’s blog shows you how the new “faceted search” feature (launched at the end of last year) was designed. In the increasingly crowded and complex social media space, it’s important to get a sense of why some of the new features being introduced were developed at all. This will help you decide which to adopt and which to skip.

While I won’t rehash the entire post here (you can read the whole thing on LinkedIn’s blog), it was pretty interesting to learn some of the findings that influenced the development of faceted search:

• The average number of results generated by a LinkedIn search was well over 10,000, making a more targeted approach to search necessary
• Users skip navigation elements at the top of the page, going straight to their search results
• Check boxes make more sense than other selection elements – clear call to action and easy to undo
• Waiting for a page to refresh isn’t fun; it’s better to show changes on the fly

Go to LinkedIn’s blog to see how the company addressed these considerations.

[Source: LinkedIn blog]