Knowledge Is Power !!
The RecWebs team has compiled a recruitment website benchmark report with some really interesting finds regarding website trends and what improvements could be made based on the data.
Your recruitment website should form a vital part of your recruitment strategy, allowing you to increase your online presence and brand awareness. More than that, a well designed and built, search engine optimised recruitment website can attract fresh talent and clients to your business and drive all-important organic traffic to your jobs. Your website is a direct reflection of your business. A poorly designed, slow, confusing, static website will reflect negatively on your business. On the flip side, a website with recruiting features and functionalities, streamlined candidate journeys, a great design and regularly posted content will engender trust in others for your business.
So how can you ensure your website is working as hard as it could be to attract talent and clients and convert visits to applications? In one word, knowledge. A recent RecWebs report analysed recruitment website trends in order to establish areas of improvement and found a number of interesting statistics. Knowledge is power and when you know how users find and interact with your website and the tools you can use to increase traffic to it, you can create a recruitment powerhouse.
Reduce bounce rate
A little over 53% of users who access recruitment websites drop off without further interaction – this is what’s called the bounce rate – which is just in the average range among websites. However, once it reaches 55% it’s an indication that action should be taken to increase visitor engagement. It’s a good reminder to do all you can to encourage visitors to stay on your website for longer by enhancing the user experience.
Look at the channels visitors use
The RecWebs research shows that organic traffic brings 57.1% of visitors to recruitment websites. This is positive as visits from users who search for specific keywords in their browser and click on the website link is the most recommended acquisition model. What does need to be increased, however, are visits from social media platforms as they are a great way to reach out to passive candidates and millennials (73% of which found their last job through a social media site), engage directly with candidates and promote your brand.
Mobile optimisation
43% of users visit recruitment websites on a mobile device – double the figures from 2018 – yet not all websites are mobile optimised. In an age where we all use our mobiles and tablets to browse the internet on the go it is vital that websites are optimised for small screens and compatible with the most popular browser and operating systems used by those devices. Google also favours mobile-friendly websites so those that are rank higher on the search list.
Browser compatibility
When it comes to browsers the thing to remember is that not everybody will be using the same one. The majority of visits on a desktop – 70% – are via Chrome but, with Apple taking up so much of the market share of mobile devices, Safari is the most popular browser to visit websites via mobile. Other browsers are also used, the most popular being Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge (the newer Windows 10 browser), Samsung Internet and Android Webview. It is therefore imperative that you test your website across not just one but multiple browsers. Browser incompatibility leading to site errors for users can be enough to damage your brand or result in a potential loss of business.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
There are over 40,000 monthly searches for recruitment agencies in the UK. To capitalise on that you need to make sure your website is optimised for search engines so that your business is found during those searches. Ensure you establish and then use relevant keywords within your copy, utilise social media platforms, and include location pages if you focus on the local market.
Ensure your website is secure
When you’re browsing online you want to be sure that you’re doing so safely and securely, which is why website security is so important to online credibility. Google will flag your website with a prominent ‘Not Secure’ message in the URL bar if your site doesn’t have an SSL certificate, an act that would deter many a potential client or candidate. And yet 27% of the recruitment websites tested for the RecWebs report were not secure.
Speed is of the essence
We’ve all been there – you’ve clicked on a link to take you to a website page and it doesn’t load immediately so you give up and move on. Not only is it frustrating when a website is slow to load, it impacts brand trust and, for every second longer your website takes to load, you risk losing a lead. Research has highlighted that the average time taken for a recruitment website to fully load is nearly 10 seconds, double the maximum recommended load time.
Increase organic traffic with Google For Jobs
Optimising Google For Jobs on your website can drive talent to your jobs and be a valuable source of organic candidate applications, yet only 41% of the analysed websites had applied the data structure. Of that 41%, 19% showed one or more errors which compromises the system and could lead to jobs not being displayed. Now more than ever recruiters should be using every available source to attract talent – especially when there is zero cost involved.
The age of recruitment fuelled by intelligent guesswork is over. By utilising data, your recruitment website can become a powerful source of talent attraction and an essential part of your recruitment strategy.
