How to improve your recruitment website conversion rate

As a recruiter, your website is a vital touchpoint for both potential candidates and clients. However they come to land on your website, it’s important that they find what they need quickly and easily in order to maximise the number of successful outcomes for your business. 

Attracting top talent and new clients to your website is one thing, but getting them to convert once they land is a whole different matter. 

We’ve compiled some essential tips on website design, user experience and other elements that will drive more conversions.

1. Focus on User-Centric Design

Focusing your website design on the best ways to fulfil the needs of your users is always the best way to approach it. 

• Make your navigation straightforward to use, enabling people to find their way around the site seamlessly.
• Use concise and descriptive headings so that users can immediately see what the site offers them.
• Have a logical site structure that aligns with user journeys. This might mean having two distinct ‘sides’ to your site, one for clients and one for candidates.
• A clean layout with good use of white space can improve readability.
• Keep the site clutter-free.

2. Enhance User Experience (UX)

What clients and candidates want to achieve on your website needs to be straightforward, to minimise the chances of them getting frustrated with the process and not continuing. 

Simplify any forms on your website to the bare essentials. In recruitment, you’re guaranteed to ask the same questions again later in the process, so you can absolutely leave off the granular details at the initial enquiry stage.

For candidates, enabling them to apply quickly via CV upload or LinkedIn integration can make a huge difference to the number of completed applications and minimise the chances of missing out on great talent due to something as simple to fix as a lengthy form. 

Integrating chatbots on your site can be a great way to solve common user queries efficiently and make sure that users stay engaged right through the process. 

You can also use optional cookies and tracking tools to serve up personalised content and role recommendations for users based on their behaviour and previous visits, which can result in a higher rate of conversions because they’re seeing the most relevant content possible. 

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3. Mobile optimisation

Research shows that around 70% of job seekers use their mobile as part of the process when looking for a new role. It’s essential that recruitment websites offer a smooth and straightforward experience for users on mobile as well as desktop. 

The areas to consider include:

• Responsive design, where the page layout changes automatically depending on the device being used.
• An application process that works seamlessly for people using their mobile – so forms that work on small screens and buttons that can be seen used without difficulty.
• A fast load time, so that users aren’t left waiting for a job spec or another page on the site to load. You can do this by optimising images and other media files, along with cleaning up messy website code.

4. Effective calls-to-action (CTAs)

It might sound obvious, but it’s surprising how many recruiters get this wrong. Telling users where they should go next on each page of your site is a vital part of the user journey. Keep it simple and descriptive. Some examples include:

• Apply now
• Apply instantly
• Contact us
• View full job description
• Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Make sure that buttons or banners used for CTAs are clearly visible on all devices and use contrasting colours for text to help readability. 

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If you’d like some help improving your recruitment website conversions, or with any part of your marketing strategy and online presence, we’d love to help. Get in touch today.