| Tuesday January 22, 2019
Curious about how I work? I will show you in this case study! Don’t judge, it’s my first. If you have any tips or feedback, feel free to hit me up on Instagram! Furthermore, enjoy reading.
The job site I’m doing this case for wants to be more unique so it has a better chance at competing with the bigger and more known job sites. Along with the competition, the following factors are the reasons for the difficulties.
Make the website personal, this means show the information the user is looking for. We know the users of a job site are open/looking for a potential new job. The key here is personalization.
This will enable the users to look for relevant vacancies quickly throughout a busy day. Users have less to think about, fewer actions to do on the job site and can explore opportunities they might not have searched for themselves.
The vacancies that can be shown can be sorted for the users the vacancies are catered to each user based on their preferences, skills and location.
If there is more information known about the user, there should also be the ability to show video’s or blogs that can help the users prepare for the next step in their career, interviews for example.
Showing personalized information will increase the trust in the job site, as result users will come back more often and they will remember and share their experience about our brand with other people.
Primarily I have worked on user experience research and creative thinking. Teaming up with my design colleague who was responsible for visual design and my development colleagues who were responsible for the interaction and implementation.
What is personalization exactly, how did it develop in the last couple of years before 2018 and what is the future of personalization.
‘Personalize’: Verb (used with object), personalized, personalizing.
Personalization makes a website more relevant for the user. Why show information that is not relevant? We should be able to make for example our homepage more relevant and attractive for our users. Making our website personal gives us the chance to create targeted content. Examples of this are vacancies, locations, photos, video’s, blogs etc.
Personalization started with a page before you would go to the actual site, where you could choose what kind of user you were. For example an employer or employee. Depending on the button you clicked you get the content that’s relevant for you.
When e-commerce got popular they started to show more and more personal products related to things you’ve looked at on the website or bought in the past. This is personalization. There are almost no big e-commerce platforms left that don’t personalize the content (products).
Personalization is used by companies like Netflix, Spotify, Amazon and Instagram. While machine learning is getting more and more developed it can even personalize applications and websites more.
Non-e-commerce websites are behind on personalization, that’s a fact. So by integrating this in our website, the website can be way ahead of most of the competitors.
The prediction is that non-commerce websites will start with personalization as well, that’s just a matter of time. With the job site, we can be leading in this.
Consumer expectations are constantly evolving. As people engage with companies across industries, their expectations for what constitutes a good customer experience continue to change. But one thing is clear: they expect the experience to be relevant and helpful. They want the companies they engage with to understand them as individuals and provide them with the right content, products, promotions, and messages so they can quickly and easily find what they are looking for.
Since this was something new for the website, there wasn’t much time and we were this was going to work we didn’t test it upfront. The testing we will do when this feature is live on the site. For this, we will use Google Analytics and Hotjar.
Although we didn’t do the user validation, we know there are some pain points on our website from experience. Our business developers are in constant contact with the users. This is the list we came up with.
These are things we know from our 10+ year experience within the job sites and recruitment business.
The solution? Creating a grid that can be used on different pages. In this grid the following things can be shown:
User logged in: Show vacancies that are new since the last time the user logged in.
User not logged in: Show recently added vacancies in general, so the user can see the activity on the website.
User logged in: Show vacancies on basis of the profile of the user. For example, the profile of the user says 10+ year experience in PHP. Only show senior or higher up vacancies to that user.
User not logged in: If the user has been at the job site before and useful information is saved in the cookies, show vacancies on basis of that information. Otherwise, show vacancies were many people applied to, that are probably the most impressive vacancies/companies. They might impress the user as well.
User logged in: Depending on the preferences of the user, show companies that comply with that.
User not logged in: Show big or popular companies that the most users will know.
There are multiple scenarios here.
User has an account: We know where the user is looking for a job (this isn’t necessarily where they are currently living). In the grid, we can show the city and the cities near there. In the future the user might be able to say, I want to work in any of these locations.
User doesn’t have an account: Use the IP address of the user to show cities near it.
User is anonymous/from another country: Show the user the cities with the most vacancies in the Netherlands. These are cities everybody knows like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht etc.
User logged in: User is shown content that helps them to apply, prepare for an interview or help them to negotiate with the potential employer. In the case of the users other than the personas, I created there could also be something like career advice.
User not logged in: User sees the newest content or the most popular content.
User logged in: User will be shown can be a call-to-action where we ask for more information to optimize the grid for that specific user.
User not logged in: User sees a register/login or uploads cv call-to-action for example.
And now, … I present to you … our personalized GRID! This is the MVP (minimum viable product) that has been decided on by the team.
