In Design, Context is King
How two identical designs resulted in -37% and +257% change respectively in volume of link visits on the same site.
When it comes to designing digital product and experiences, understanding how, when and who will be using them is critical — in other words, understanding the context you are designing for will go a long way in helping you deliver a better product.
Recently at SEEK, we released a new product called Talent Search aimed at making it easier and more efficient for hirers to find top talent.
One of the ways we looked to maximise the synergies between our new and existing products was by ensuring hirers were provided with opportunities to access Talent Search at the most opportune moments in their task flow.
Talent Search was released as a replacement, and a substantial enhancement, of our ‘JobSeeker Profiles’ database — a product that was already tightly integrated with our Advertiser Centre (a suite of products allowing hirers to post jobs to SEEK and manage candidates).
While working on improvements to two of the integration points between the Advertiser Centre and Talent Search, we came across an interesting result, highlighting just how important context and understanding of the the user goals at each stage of their journey is to the success of your design.
Design goal
The design goal was simple: increase traffic from the Advertiser Centre to Talent Search, across a number of integration points.
Integration point #1
This particular integration point has been a thorn in the sides of many of us for some time. As you can see in the image below, it appears as a tab, setting the expectation that when the hirer clicks on it, the candidate profiles relevant for the job they advertised (i.e. the Talent Search results) will be presented within the tab.
However, due to time pressures on the project that delivered this feature initially, it was not completed at the time, and remained in a compromised state for a little longer than we would have liked. The compromised state meant that upon clicking on the Talent Search tab, the user would be navigated to Talent Search results in a new window! Clearly, something we needed to fix.
The new design presented a sample of the Talent Search results within the tab, with a call to action to browse the rest of the results.
As well as feeling good about fixing a usability issues with tab behaviour, we expected this re-design to drive more traffic to Talent Search, since we are now presenting the hirer with an enticing sample of candidates.
Integration point #2
The second integration point comes at the end of the job ad posting process — the, hirer has just posted their job ad, and we suggest that they should review potential candidates matching the job ad.
Given the business and hirer value associated with connecting with potential candidates, we felt that this entry point didn’t work hard enough to drive traffic to Talent Search. The value of using Talent Search was not presented to the hirer, and the call to action itself had to compete with a number of other dominant elements on the page (e.g. the social sharing buttons and the ‘View open jobs’ button).
The redesigned page utilised the same concept as integration point #1 — present the value of using Talent Search, coupled with a clear call to action.
So, how did they perform?
The results
We always expected integration point #2 to perform better, but were surprised at just how much better it performed.
Integration point #1 resulted in a 37% decrease in traffic to Talent Search
When you think about it, this is not overly surprising. The old design (unintentionally) tricked users into navigating to Talent Search because it set the wrong expectation. This would have resulted in user frustration and a high bounce rate. With the re-design, the user is in control (as they should be) and they have voted with their clicks.
Integration point #2 resulted in a 257% increase in traffic to Talent Search
Just after the hirer has posted a job ad, they are in the frame of mind of looking for people to fill the role they have just advertised. Often, the hirer may not be sure as to how many applicants they will get, so reviewing our database of matching profiles should be an enticing proposition.
Summary
There are many ways to understand the context you are designing for —analysing current behaviour patterns through data analysis, as well as performing research with your target audience are just two of the ways. We’ve always found that mapping the user journey and asking ‘What is the user trying to achieve? / What do they need to help them achieve their goal?’ at each step helps us prioritise what information we present and how.
The results of the redesign so far are encouraging and clearly highlight the importance of context, and more specifically the importance of presenting the most relevant information at the right step of the user journey.
For us, the next steps are to further fine-tune these and other integration points, through data analysis and A/B testing. We also need to perform more analysis on what happens after the hirer has navigated from the Advertiser Centre to Talent Search, to understand the differences in behaviour based on the integration point used.
