This trend has had a dramatic effect on how jobseekers engage with job boards and highlights the importance of ensuring your online recruitment business is fully mobile optimised. Failing to recognise the importance of mobile will have a detrimental effect on your brand, recruitment revenues and crucially jobseeker engagement.

Since the iPhone was launched in 2007, mobile technology has revolutionised how we communicate on a fundamental level. We can now access a huge array of information and services from any location at any time and in many cases using multiple devices. That being said, for many people mobile devices have become the primary tool for accessing the internet and they are just as likely to use their device from the comfort of their home using a WiFi connection. I know personally I seldom use my laptop at home any more unless I need to use a specific Microsoft application such as Excel or edit my latest holiday snaps. The majority of my time online is now via my iPad or Android smartphone using my broadband connection so does that classify me as a mobile user?

The impact of mobile

At Madgex we continue to see dramatic increases in mobile traffic across our clients’ job boards with an average of 20% – 25% of all traffic originating from mobile devices. This varies across sectors & niches, however in some cases we have seen figures as high as 40% of traffic coming from iPad alone. When we reflect on earlier research conducted in December 2009 we were seeing mobile traffic levels at 1.5% – 2% on average. These figures clearly demonstrate the huge uplifts we have seen over the last three years.

When we analyse mobile jobseekers’ behaviour the high volumes of traffic are not yet converting into a proportionate volume of applications. On the surface this may seem strange, but would you apply for your next role on a crowded noisy bus? In actual fact jobseekers are tending to use mobile devices predominantly for searching, emailing, sharing and bookmarking relevant jobs, then applying from their desktop wherever that may be. Over time this pattern will no doubt change, but for the time being desktop is still the preferred channel for the majority of job applications.

Looking beyond direct traffic from mobile, email still plays a vital role in driving high quality applications. The implication here for job boards is that between 27% – 40% (depending on which report you read) of people access their email via their smartphone. In order to provide the best possible user experience and capitalise on this traffic you must have a mobile optimised site. If a jobseeker receives an email alert and they open the link to a job board which is not optimised then naturally this makes it very difficult to both read the job detail and also apply for the position through their mobile device.

Innovation is the key to a successful mobile strategy

At Madgex we have been providing mobile job board solutions for over nearly four years now and recently launched our latest HTML 5 mobile web app to further enhance our mobile offering, with our 3rd generation iPhone and Android apps surfacing in March. As with all our projects we undertook numerous rounds of user testing and held focus groups with jobseekers, recruiters and job board owners to understand their individual sets of needs. One of most requested features by our clients we acted upon was the inclusion of mobile specific sales inventory to help monetise mobile audiences. This not only helps increase revenues but also enables recruiters to target mobile users.

Our product roadmap will continue to adapt to the rapidly changing mobile landscape to provide a broad range of mobile services. The next stage of our work on mobile will be a project looking at responsive design, a prototype of which has already been created during our annual Hack Day in February.

Paul Eustice, Mobile JavaScript Developer at Madgex, comments “sites that were once desktop-only can now be built to suit the form factors of the multitude of devices accessing them. They can respond to different screen sizes to provide the best possible experience to every user, regardless of whether a site is being viewed on a smartphone, tablet, laptop or smart TV.” Some laptops can now detach their keyboard and become tablets. Touch screens we once only found on a smartphone can now be found on laptops and even desktop screens.

The feedback we’ve had from our client base is that mobile will continue to be a vitally important channel for the foreseeable future. The increasing number of jobseekers using mobile will continue to grow and technology will provide job boards with opportunities to provide relevant jobs, content and tools to their audience. If you are a job board owner and don’t have a coherent mobile experience you are missing out on a huge audience and falling behind the competition.

The post Is your job board mobile ready? appeared first on Madgex.

There are 2 main problems to solve; the set up of the hand held device (making it as natural as possible and easy to record) and technically how to record both interaction with the phone and facial expression. The latter is made easier if you have Morae version 3 which records a 2 camera set-up but not everyone has the budget for this.

I decided to use a plastic sled to mount the phone and camera. This came from fellow Brightonian and User Experiencer Harry Brignall in his blog post about making a sled for mobile testing. I made sure the sled was light, clear and slightly narrower than the average width of a smart phone. The angle of the bend was just over 45 degrees, so a camera could be fixed easily to record the user interacting with the phone. (Handy that my brother is in the plastic moulding business but Harry Brignall suggests using a toaster to mould the plastic).

I used a HUE web camera which is small, flexible, cute and relatively affordable at £40. It’s pretty adaptable as the base can be removed; so it can stand nicely on a desk or if you remove the base can be attached to a device using a USB extension lead.

Next,  as I already knew the types of smart phones my participants would use (targeting), I purchased simple plastic cases. I was then able to velcro the cases to the sled using double sided velcro tabs. This way I could just slip in the users phone without worrying about damaging or leaving unsightly stickiness on their precious phone. (Word of warning here – don’t get silicone cases as nothing sticks to silicone!).

When the camera arrived I attached it to the top of the phone and realised this produced an upside down image (doh)! So I fixed it to the bottom instead. This actually works better, as I was able to angle it to the left so that it didn’t interfere with their view and it presented a better position for recording, as their thumbs and fingers don’t get in the way as much. (It would need to be positioned to the right if a left handed participant). Of course this also meant that I didn’t actually need the plastic sled to have an angled portion above – it could be just a less intrusive straight piece of plastic. Although, I think having it leaves you the ability to change your options in the future – some cameras do swivel so could be used above the phone. (Also Morae has an invert image functionality).

For capturing both the user’s interaction with the phone and their expression I used a 2 camera set up with a Phillips web cam on the desktop. The software used was Microsoft Expressions Encoder 4 which has a screen capture/recorder and a manager, similar to Morae. Initially I tried the free download version but this only records for ten minutes at a time – so it was necessary to upgrade to the Pro version which was about £150. The trick here is to connect the HUE webcam to the encoder screen capture and have the desktop camera running through Amcap’s (free) screen capture software. You can then have the Amcap window open on the desktop at whatever size you want and define this as the desktop region to record with the tool in the Encoder screen capture. Below is an example of what a recorded testing session would look like on playback in a media player.

So there we have it. This set-up worked well for us and also didn’t swallow up all our research budget.

The post The joys of mobile usability testing appeared first on Madgex.

But simplicity sometimes just isn’t that simple! Good simplicity always has clarity and is usable as well as simple. Elegant simple designs don’t just happen by chance, they involve careful curation and are usually the result of difficult decisions. We are finding it best to think very carefully before judging something to be unnecessary and removing it from the interface. It is also important to differentiate between ‘nice to haves’ and critical business or user requirements.

I love that John Maeda (The Laws of Simplicity) describes simplicity as ‘thoughtful reduction’. In the initial stages of our design process I found a good question to keep asking ourselves was; ‘what can we remove to make this more focused and clear?’ Most big decisions we are making are around what to include and not to include, which might involve taking out features and functionality that aren’t crucial for the user to achieve what they need to achieve on the mobile website.

We are finding that it is usually necessary to simplify interactions so that they work not only on a small screen, but for multiple platforms and mobile devices. What works well on an iPhone might not work as well on an Android or Blackberry device. It’s important to remember that a mobile interface is layered, or ‘stacked’, rather than just linear journeys – this can be valuable in making more of limited screen space and simplifying navigation.

A mobile web app for a job board is a task based experience and the key focus should always be on the primary tasks. The tasks in our case are searching and applying for jobs and the app should have simple, clear journeys to achieving these user goals. If we can simplify the journeys and at the same time remove some of the barriers that the mobile experience presents then even better. For example, there are still so many barriers to applying for a job on a mobile – so how can we make it easier to apply or do we provide alternatives?

We also found that it’s possible to end up putting things back or adding functionality if research and testing indicates that they are necessary for a richer experience. For example, we removed browsing for jobs from our original concept, but our research indicated we should include it because a very significant number of users rely on this preferring it to keyword search.

The word simplicity can be used to imply beauty, purity and clarity. It may also be used with a negative connotation to denote insufficient complexity. When designing for mobile it’s important to get the balance right between simplicity and complexity to create the most fulfilling experience for the job seeker. As Leonardo da Vinci once stated – ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’.

The post Simplicity is not always simple – designing for mobile appeared first on Madgex.

The brief was to re-design a page which would market a new mobile app, as well as instruct users on downloading the app. My first stop was to the Creative Director to get insight into the current design as well as draw upon their extensive knowledge of the product we were marketing (the mobile app). This helped me to break the original brief down into some requirements, and understand the hierarchy of information that I would be working with.

Looking for ways to improve the overall design I decided to share my findings as well as some layout sketches with our User Experience Consultant. With some further discussion and iterations we came up with a new design that met both the existing and new requirements.

3 integrated improvements:

• We structured the client’s copy into a pyramid model, page title, intro and full text. We then divided the marketing text over the page; creating an introduction for those keen to download, followed by the two step download instruction and the remaining marketing text for those wanting to know a bit more about the app.
• As an image of the app was a requirement we decided to add a large one for visual impact, making that app tangible. We gave the far left device a jaunty little jump, creating a bit of movement and adding a little joy to the experience.
• The size of the ‘Download App’ button was increased, making it bigger than the buttons on the rest of the site. With mobile users in mind, the thumb or forefinger could be deployed with ease for that all important download moment.

View this page for yourself and leave us your comments.

http://www.drapersjobs.com/apps/iphone

The post A new job. A new approach. appeared first on Madgex.