jobs.ac.uk is the UK’s leading academic jobs board.

The challenge

jobs.ac.uk commissioned Johnston North to conduct a user experience study for 50 of their university clients.

The study

The objective of the report was to help Higher Education Institutions improve the quality of their online recruitment websites by focusing on the user experience.

User experience is a visitor’s journey to and through the website. The report covered three key areas: accessibility, credibility and usability.

1. Accessibility addresses the importance of ensuring that everyone, particularly disabled visitors, can navigate, understand and interact with the website.
2. Credibility focuses on whether visitors believe and trust the website enough to act on it.
3. Usability looks at whether visitors can successfully and efficiently complete their goals and tasks using the website.

Each area was assessed through ten to twelve criteria in a ‘mystery shopping’ style test. The report covered how each criteria was tested, what common problems were found and how to go about implementing best practice.

In total, 50 UK higher education institutions were tested in the study.

The study identified five key areas of user experience related to online recruitment – links, names, consistency, standards and help.