While social media websites are more popular than ever, people just aren’t all that happy with them, indicates the new American Customer Satisfaction Index survey results.
This survey included over 5,000 participants, all of which gave their true and honest opinions of the big social media websites: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and Wikipedia. Collectively, these websites only scored a 68 out of 100 – a solid D+, and a 1.4% drop from last year’s satisfaction rates. This is just about on par with the popularity of cable companies and airlines, said the report.
Facebook and LinkedIn ranked the lowest (around 62%), while Wikipedia ranked the highest. The most complained about problems on all of these websites were security concerns and online ads.
For privacy, Facebook has consistently changed their policies over the last seven months in efforts to make users feel secure, but the survey indicates that most people just aren’t buying it, and rated Facebook less than 4 out of 10 on the “privacy” question.
For advertisements, 60% of people said they just don’t pay attention to the ads at all, and nearly 20% said that they don’t enjoy their experiences as much with ads crowding their screens. These websites were often established without any advertising whatsoever, so when they were monetized with ad space, users became disgruntled.
“If you want to connect on a social network with friends and family, most users are still going to use Facebook. But as competitors get stronger, the risk of losing to those competitors increases as satisfaction declines,” said Larry Freed, one of the researchers that provided information for the report. “The biggest risk some of these companies face is realizing they don’t always know what is best for their customers. They need to continuously measure the customer experience and do it the right way.”
It’s important to consider the steep decline in popularity of these websites carefully. While it’s still valuable to maintain your social media pages each and every day, it’s also important to focus on your stomping grounds – your website. This will guarantee that even if the user bases and satisfaction rates for social media hubs continue to drop, you’ll still be going strong as a business.
