I worked with Michael Page, a global recruitment company, to align their sites across their many regions and improve lead generation.
UX
UI
Information architecture
There was a lack of consistency between regions in terms of site architecture and page layout, despite them all dealing with similar content. I was tasked with aligning the sites so they all adhered to UX best practices, whilst still allowing for flexibility based on regional priorities, and increasing the number of client enquiries.
I worked with several regions (UK, Australia, Spain, Netherlands and Brazil), which represented extreme cases in terms of site content and structure. If I could align these then the other regions would follow.
I worked with colleagues to carry out workshops with various stakeholders at Michael Page including the site owners for each region. Key takeaways from these workshops included:
There are two primary audiences for their sites; clients (employers) and candidates (job seekers), each with separate goals and requirements.
The on-page forms used throughout the sites on lead generation pages were getting a lot of enquiries from candidates but these were meant for clients.
There are some key sectors which aren’t given enough prominence e.g. finance and healthcare.
Some regions had their own priorities so our ‘global’ solution would need to accommodate these. For instance, Australia wanted to highlight temporary contracts for job seekers.
Regions varied greatly in the number of offices they had. We would need to accommodate those with one single office and those with 30+.
My research using Google Analytics showed that visitors to the site are primarily searching for jobs and are therefore candidates rather than clients. Some advice article pages also proved very popular. I wanted these key tasks to be given prominence in the navigation.
On contact pages there could have been more visual hierarchy to elevate the primary CTAs and make it clear which are for candidates and which are for clients.
For SEO purposes Michael Page included lots of content on their contact pages. Using design patterns such as accordions and introducing more hierarchy to the page the content could be more digestible for the user.
I mapped the current site structure for the five key regions to look for similarities and differences, i.e. what we can make consistent between all the regions and where we need to allow for flexibility?
Categorising the pages at multiple levels, which would be reflected in the main navigation, helped create clear, focused user flows.
Reducing the number of options at the first level of the navigation helped channel users (job seekers vs employers) down their appropriate path.
My primary aim was to distinguish clearly between the two separate pathways for clients and candidates. This was achieved by using CTA cards in the hero on various pages that brought clarity and added visual hierarchy.
I endeavoured to improve the visual design of the pages using only styles from the live sites. This allowed pages to be more digestible and in turn improve engagement.
I moved the form to the bottom of the page rather than a sidebar but ensured it was linked to through a CTA clearly targeting employers, rather than job seekers.
