The Met Police’s website has had the highest (by some way) increase in British internet traffic at the start of this year.
UKOM/Nielsen’s latest figures (Feb 2011) show Google, MSN and Facebook as the clear leaders in the amount of time spent online by British internet users. No real surprise there, but perhaps more interesting is that The Met Police’s new website has the highest increase in volume of traffic. (an increase in 226% month on month).
Much of the success of the Met Police’s new website has been attributed to a piece of functionality that allows users to track crime by postcode. It’s an excellent piece of illuminating functionality that works very well.
Moreover, what this highlights is that users respond well to information that is specifically relevant to them. The increase in traffic is strong evidence that recruitment websites need to do the same. Whether it’s your news, blog or email marketing the more tailored the better. See how Red Commerce do this expertly
How can recruitment agencies learn from this?
I look at hundreds of recruitment websites per week. There are some aesthetically very pleasing ones out there and some with very good SEO. So many of them, however, don’t benefit the recruitment agency enough because the functionality, and therefore user experience, is poor. Conversions into CVs are lower than they could be.
Consider for your recruitment website;
How well does my Job Search work?
Can people find jobs by refining their search by location or salary etc? (as they can on an excellent ecommerce site)
Can passive candidates register with my site which and then be automatically contacted when jobs matching their interest are posted?
Can specific consultants be notified when a candidate registers with specific skill sets?
Of course we are looking at just one area of the success of a website. What’s clear is that The Met Police’s website proves the advantages of excellent, reliable, user friendly functionality. Recruitment websites must do the same.
Source:
Owen, Ed, Brand Republic, 18th April 2011,
http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1066136/crime-map-website-swells-met-police-traffic/
