At Linktree, we empower creators with the tools they need to expand their businesses and curate their digital universe. By enhancing the link's capability, we want to expand Linktree into a one-stop destination.
I led the creation of the new Document link and Text & Image link for creators to upload their media and showcase directly on their Linktree. After launching document link to 100% of users, we've received 99% positive feedback and discovered a lot of fantastic usages on the customers' Linktrees.
Creators previously had to link to other websites to display their media, disrupting a more engaging experience with their audience.
Enable creators to upload the media that are hosted on Linktree and directly showcase them onto their Linktree.
• For creators, enhance link capability by enabling them to upload their media with a passage of text in their favour.
• For visitors, enhance more engaging and embedded experiences by providing a seamless experience of viewing creator's content.
Linktree's product design process includes Understand, Explore, Deliver, and Decide, which are flexibly applied to each project, feature, and phase.
Our process isn’t a single or linear process. We iterate multiple times to derive the best solutions to resolve the problems and ship the ultimate experience to customers by syncing up frequently with teams.
Collected feedback around unmet user needs when it comes to uploading their content on their Linktree and observed how they'd used existing features to overcome the problems.
After in-depth design explorations and multiple iterations with the teams about technical efforts and future visions, we decided to split into each type of link to create better scalable links in the long term.
Designed flows for creators to simply add a PDF file and a description if needed to activate and showcase the content.
• Designed the information order of the link's setting panel to align with how it's displayed on the visitor end to help with more intuitive creation.
• Not just followed the existing design patterns for consistency but also suggested a new design pattern (file uploading components) to be applied for this new link type to the design system team.
Designed the simplest way of previewing a PDF.
Rather than taking a screenshot of the first page of a document, we decided to execute with iFrame to provide more dynamic and natural preview experience.
Rolled out to 20% of users first to learn about the impact to our operational team after launch.
• In 4 weeks, we rolled out to 100% of our customers as we've had only 1 removal incident out of our base of +1500 accounts.
• Since the 100% roll-out, we’ve grew our user base by 320% in 2 weeks.
99% (55/56) of our customers gave us positive feedback and love our new feature.
We've discovered fascinating usages for this document link as below.
As we limited up to 3 images to the customers on the free tier for more monetisation opportunities, I designed the complex flows in consideration of each condition.
Designed the information order of the link's setting panel to align with how it's displayed on the visitor end to help with more intuitive creation.
By closely collaborating with a UX writer, we considered the best way of communication with creators to help them understand this link.
Designed the seamless way of exploring multiple images.
By introducing a carousel slider in the product on the visitor end, we improved the capability of providing more engaging experience.
With just one Text & Image link, creators can add any combination of text, images and a button by utilising this feature in their favour.
We've completed the development after thorough QAs and released this feature behind the feature flag to test with selected creators. After carefully monitoring their adoption of this feature, we look to open up this link to a larger group.
• Learned how to better considerate technical limitation by closely discussing with engineers before diving deeper into designs.
• Learned how to define problems and what to solve based on actual user feedback by teaming up closely with PMs.
• Learned how to create a seamless experience for both end users (creators & visitors) in consideration of a holistic view of a product.
It would've been awesome if I could've seen the metrics and feedback from creators about the Text & Image link but I had to leave Linktree before the official launch. If I could have an opportunity to work on this link further, I'd love to design the next phase of all the media links beyond the first stage of development by improving the experience based on actual feedback.