Why do clever, solid business decision makers frequently make a total hash of things when it comes to their website!

The truth is that great many of websites out there are products providing a function for a user base.  But at design / build time this is totally forgotten.

The discussion that is missed too early is,
“Which comes first for this site, usability / function or  look / feel.”

To put it a different way the question "is it a work of art to look at, or a product for people to use?".

For a recruitment agency website this discussion is probably going to result somewhere in the middle but closer to function that looks, such as:

·         Attractive, positive message showing us as professional

·         Clear information to attract clients

·         Easy to use to attract candidates to apply

I want to urge you all to consider this question and have clear business objectives for your website.

How pretty is Ebay or Google – are they works of art or fantastic usable designs?

Firstly, a thank you for everyone who has contacted me regards the last couple of posts. Your direct feedback is appreciated and will help mould future posts.

So our topic continues to discuss best practices for recruitment web sites. As promised last week, this post covers browsing jobs and Google.

So you have a funky website, your supplier sold you a “corker” with an array of search options to confuse your users and a great big “Search Jobs” button. Even better it is live on the Internet for 14 million online UK job seekers to use it.

What next? Well people visiting your site and using it would be a good idea. But where do they come from?

“Search engines like Google and Yahoo”,  I hear you chorus. Well yes, that would be great. Your website supplier may have even provided an “SEO” service (search engine optimization), they may have shown you how you can type your company name and office location into Google, WOW there you are on page one! The candidates will be rolling in!

Probably not, you need your jobs to be indexed by Google, as many pages as possible with job specifics clearly shown. 

Unfortunately from reviewing a great deal of recruitment agency websites more than half do not let Google read their job adverts at all. Out of the small fraction that does the jobs are badly optimized - too frequently all on one page.

The first problem is Google does not (typically) click buttons. It really likes to click hyperlinks, and (sorry to get techie) real HTML anchor tags not JavaScript functions. Go to your site - can you get to all your jobs by clicking normal links? On a PC in Internet Explorer put your mouse over the link and look at the bottom left of the window. Does it say JavaScript? If so Google will not click it, instead it needs to show the url for the next page.

If you have a large volume of jobs then consider providing some links on your site to segments of your job stock, such as all part time jobs or all jobs in London etc.

Best practice Rule 2 “Let Google browse your job adverts via suitable links to search results”.

So now Google can read your jobs – yes, but there are still a few more popular Gotchas that so many websites insist on implementing. I will keep this list short-ish today. We could go crazy here with loads of tips, maybe in a later blog post.

Best practice Rule 3 “Do NOT display all your full job adverts on one big page/s. Always put each full job advert on to a page of its own. The results page should link to this full page job advert (with a link! and no javascript!)”

Best practice Rule 4 “Always ensure the job detail page has a handy back navigation to the search results”

Best practice Rule 5 “Always display the job title and location and category on your search results page and on your job details page”

While we are at it Best practice Rule 6 “On the full job detail page have a clear and noticeable call to action, reading apply now or something suitable. Put this call to action button or link at the bottom of the advert and near the top if your design allows.”

This covers just a few of the basic "must do" points for your site to be more Google friendly. In a future post I will cover more SEO topics – let me know how techie you would like it to get (I can always invite our resident SEO guru to help author a post).

While considering Google it must be remembered that a great deal of job seekers are active browsers. By this I mean they are looking for a new job but their seeking range is wide not narrow. Frequently a complex search form puts this user off. They really benefit from some simple links to click, enabling them to browse a wider range of vacancies.

Research suggests that 80% of jobs seekers are pragmatic, only 20% are careerist – don’t make your site easy to search but really hard to browse! Help the 80% find a job on your site!

Please keep the emails and comments coming. 

In my last blog I talked about making the most from your online presence – which can be cost effective and delivery high yields. As promised this is the first in a series of posts about best practices for recruitment agency websites.

We review and support agencies across the UK of various sizes – some have thousands of jobs on their systems others have tens of jobs. Too frequently small companies with 30 to 100 jobs are sold a complex website offering their users detailed search options such as category, salary, location, hours and keyword search. Great isn’t it? Such a web site gives the user true search power to find what they are lookingfor- umm, in a word - NO!

The problem is the technology supplier is selling what appeals – the features and functionality of the big boys. To most small SME agencies this will look and sound the best thing possible – and in favour of the supplier probably the more expensive option.

The problem is no one is considering the user – the online jobseeker.

The key word that is missed is EXPERIENCE! What is the experience when I come across all these options?

Well I might fill in salary,location and some keywords and click search with a keen eagerness to find my next perfect job. Unfortunately more often than the user is faced with a page saying – “No results found”. This is a very poor experience and will probably end up with the user leaving the agency website for good!

Job seeking is highly pragmatic – the job seeker changes their expectation and ideal job throughout their job-seeking journey. Typically the search widens the longer they are seeking.

The online job search should provide the ability to get to the jobs that may be of interest quicklyand easily. Jobs should be returned when ever possible, there will be no application if no job advert is read.

The search complexity has to reflect the choice provided by the data. This is key to a positive user experience.

So the best practice rule 1:

“Only provide search options that will typically return jobs from the choice of jobs available – if all the jobs are in London then don’t ask the user to choose between London and Edinburgh”

This may seem obvious– but go and have a look at your site and your competitors sites – how hard isit to actually get the search to return jobs? You may be shocked!

Next time post–Browsing not searching and helping Google read your jobs

Over the last 12months we have looked at hundreds of recruitment agency websites some small some huge. The question that springs to my mind time and time again is – do you get any applicants via your own website? Is that number good and worth your efforts? Are your competitors getting 10 times as many?

Many of you can answer this question confidentially as you measure your sites success and make the most of each online jobseeker who crosses your digital door. Well done! But could you get more?

Unfortunately there are plenty of you who do not know the answer to this question. Why not?

I understand that running your website is not your core business (unlike mine!) but it is an asset that you may well not be making the most of. Many agencies take the time to upload their jobs to their site but how easy is to for a job seeker to find the right job and apply.

There needs to be a best practice to help agencies improve the return from running their website. But what is the best practice and is there a one size fits all lycra style solution?

I firmly believe the answer to this question is NO! There are a few vital statistics that will allow you to find the right fitting best practice…

1. How many jobs do you have for a job seeker to view?
   
2. How easy is it for a job seeker to apply?  
   
3. How much pre-application filtering do you need?

Over the next few months I am going to blog on specific key areas surrounding recruitment agency website best practices. Some will be high level and some will be down and out geek level.

Each one will consider the vital measurements where suitable so it is relevant to you.

And maybe, it will help you increase your return on running your website and drive more cash to your bottom line!

So, there are more mobile phones in the UK than people! It is correct to say that nearly every job seeker has a mobile phone. WOW, surely a great platform to advertise jobs on? This must be a well worthwhile development investment for every jobs-based website in the UK! Or is it a total waste of money?

Statistics were released from AdMob for September, which shows the handsets being used, their capabilities and market share.

Interestingly, the majority of mobile browsing is carried out on standard handsets, not just those designed to have full screens, qwerty keyboards or touch screens. The common screen size is 176px by 208px - for browsing this is quite small. On standard job websites, the job seeker is treated to a page of job results normally showing job title, salary, location and a short summary. This information is needed so the job seeker can decide their interest level in a particular position. Scanning of the results is typically done vertically down the screen, making use of the entire length of the monitor. 176px by 208px is not going to give anywhere near the same experience - this suggests a successful mobile job-seeking tool needs a more creative solution than porting current search features straight to mobile.

The stats show a strong uptake of UTMS / Edge. Both are technologies the consumer knows more as 3G or faster mobile web. This is a great sign; the early days of mobile browsing, with the initial hype around 10 years ago of WAP, was slow and annoying! This is a great sign for the job seeking mobile application.

Mobile Advertising is growing. All the analysts are highlighting this fact and expect to yet see further growth in this field.

So - we have good technology out there; it is not too slow and advertising on mobile web is growing. The only downside is that mainstream devices are difficult to view large pages on and do not overcome the small screen size. This issue has been overcome extremely well on the latest Apple iPhone, which allows easy scrolling and zooming. However, these types of devices are not yet widespread.

Based on a very unscientific poll of colleagues and friends, the biggest mobile web usage is news, email, photos and train times, in that order. With technology overcoming the problems linked with creative solutions targeting the smaller screen, it is only a matter of time before job seeking is a serious mobile web usage. The killer question may well not be if job seeking becomes common place on mobile, but when will it become common place.

In the meanwhile, before everyone is using web-friendly iPhone style-devices, I believe mobile job seeking applications should provide supplementary job seeker support, building on top of the experience of standard based web sites.

Join our vote which went out in our November Newsletter.... 

• Yes (Top Banana)
• Probably (Ripe Banana)
• Not sure (OK Banana)
• No (Rotten Banana)

In April 2007, it was recorded by the Mobile Data Association that there were 15 million web users via the mobile. How do you think that this trend will help benefit the recruitment marketplace? How much would you pay to advertise on the mobile web?

Here at Allthetopbananas.com, we are currently investigating this area in depth and would really enjoy hearing your views and thoughts - comment on this blog, email me at Dave@Allthetopbananas.com or just pick the phone up and talk to us on 0871 4343438

Silverlight 1.0 is released (previously known as WPF/e) and next year 1.1 will be out – this new web presentation format is huge and here to stay.  The development /design tools provided and the Silverlight Streaming service on Live.com really makes it feasible to quickly and cost effectively add video based services to existing products. Allthetopbananas.com is currently building a career related social network and video CVs will be an early release to feature. We will use Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight Streaming on Live.com for the first release of this service. This will enable a custom branded video experience which is easy for our jobseekers to use. 

 More exciting for us is the user interface we aim to develop for recruiters to browse through the videos. Some of the latest and innovative user experiences seen in Vista or the iPhone are now feasible to be developed for Internet sites. I cannot wait to really maximize this technology to improve our products experience and functionality.  Our designers are already working with the Expression Studio Tools experimenting with new interfaces to make job search easier and more enjoyable. 

The MS Live.com platform was showcased in various presentations at Mix07. Since returning to the office on Wednesday we already have prototype versions of job results pinpointed on a map. Our development will focus on making the map view helpful to the user and easy. 

The Live.com integration with Live ID, hotmail contacts, spaces and messenger are all valuable. We have thrown a great number of ideas around and can see that in the future we will make use of this. The biggest and most difficult issue is using Live ID verses our current authentication system. I don’t want to introduce a barrier for the user and creating a Live ID is a longer winded process than I want to force our users through, but the argument that it will reduce the barrier based on the popularity of hotmail is very strong. There is also the issue of migrating our existing users to Live ID. I expect that we will release a hybrid giving the user choice and review the user activity before going one way or the other – some of the potential services make it very worthwhile. 

To wrap up – the introduction of Expression Studio and Silverlight is the start of an interface revolution of the web . I think comparable to the user experience shift of moving from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95! Allthetopbananas.com will soon have early enhancements released based on this technology. The services offered by the Live.com platform will enable some highly integrated and enjoyable experiences for users already familiar with Live services. 

Finally it would have been great if Mix07 had included the latest MS Surface product for all the techy gadget mad to play with!
 

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