Your recruitment website is an incredible multi-tasker. It attracts both candidates and potential clients, acts as a 24/7 recruiter and a job board, provides key information about your business, and offers industry insights. It is also an incredibly important branding tool. Your recruitment website is your online ID and as such is the perfect vehicle to boost your branding, in terms of both design and company values.
A well-branded website will ensure all visitors view your company in the way you want them to. It will enable you to stand out from competitors and increase your credibility. To help you boost your branding through your recruitment website, we’ve compiled 5 top tips.
1. Weave branding throughout the design
Do you have established brand colours and logos? Shapes, patterns and fonts that are associated with your brand? Ensure they are highly present on every page of your website. These are visual representations of your brand and the more they are used, the stronger the brand recognition. Keep them consistent throughout your website (and in any other marketing material).
Your logo should be prominently displayed on every page, and at the very least be on your header (top left, as that’s naturally where most people look first) and footer. Brand colours should be taken from your logo and even the font you choose should match your brand – think about how you want to be perceived and pick a font that represents that, whether it’s corporate or playful.
2. Choose media carefully
The multimedia choices you make for your website can have a huge impact on how your brand is perceived. Whatever you utilise – images, videos, animations, illustrations, and/or podcasts – will connect with visitors in an immediate and powerful way. A study analysing eye-tracking data found that 94% of all first impressions are design-related, with the hero image being one of the main areas on which the eye lingers. Your imagery, in whatever form it takes, needs to be eye-catching, visually interesting and engaging to avoid a high bounce rate.
Chosen wisely, your website’s imagery will boost your branding and visually depict your values. From the colours in the image, to the photographic technique, to the people shown, to the choice of multimedia, to the locations the images were shot in – all these elements give the user an immediate understanding of who you are, what you do and what your business’ values are. Think of your imagery as a vessel for storytelling, conveying your brand story in an immediate and striking way. What story do you want to tell?
3. Showcase your brand values and expertise through your blog
A regularly updated blog that provides visitors with thoughtful, relevant content is a great asset to any website. As well as boosting your website’s SEO, it is a fantastic vehicle for branding. Everything you publish on your recruitment website is a direct reflection of who you are and what you stand for as a company. It also showcases the breadth of experience and expertise amongst you and your team, positioning your business as an industry thought leader.
Career and interview advice articles communicate to candidates that you care and are knowledgeable about the process and the industry. Company news pieces can help to provide an insight into your business and the people who work there, as well as celebrate any successes and achievements. Articles that comment on value-led matters such as D&I, employee wellbeing, and job flexibility, show that not only do you consider these to be important, you understand how topical and current they are in the workplace today. Words are powerful. Use them wisely and you can positively influence your brand identity.
4. Testimonials
Celebrate your successes on the About Us page and your Homepage but don’t forget that your clients’ and candidates’ successes are also your own – and they are the ones your website visitors will be most interested in. Third party brand boosting is incredibly valuable and the power of testimonials for social proofing is undeniable. By including testimonials on your website, you are effectively helping potential clients and candidates make a decision and feel confident about that choice, knowing that others have done just that and benefited from it. That is social proofing – establishing trust and confidence in visitors to your website via third party influence. Testimonials and case studies are an incredibly powerful sales tool, reinforcing your messaging, setting expectations, and substantiating your claims. We’re all influenced by others, it’s human nature, and it makes sense to harness that in business.
Keep your testimonials simple and snappy and try to include details of the individual giving the testimonial – an image, their name, role and company. This legitimises the claim, gives you credibility and instils trust in the reader. Don’t forget about candidates – their experiences are just as important, not just to reassure and inspire other talented jobseekers to use your services but because any positive reviews on the way your recruitment business conducts itself is good PR. A stand-alone page for testimonials allows website visitors to immediately check out your credentials and can be used as a CTA on other pages. Testimonials can also be peppered throughout the other pages on your website as supporting copy. Include them at the bottom of a page, next to pricing or by a claim in your copy.
5. Celebrate your people and your story
Your people are your brand’s biggest assets. Showcasing team members on a Meet the Team page can establish a more immediate connection, allowing visitors to see the human side of your brand. This is all the more important in recruitment – an incredibly people-oriented industry. It will establish trust, build early relationships and make you more memorable. Allowing website users an insight into the people behind the brand through photos and copy makes you more approachable and a brief section of text highlighting their role within the company and the skills they bring to the table will reassure visitors that your team can fulfil their needs.
Your About Us page is similarly important, celebrating your story as a business. Research has shown that 52% of users travel to the About Us page after visiting the homepage. Why? It’s all about building trust. Users want to read about the people behind the business, how and when it started, what its values are and, importantly for a service industry like recruitment, who they might be working with. Telling your story humanises your brand and boosts its power.
Consistency is key when it comes to branding. Ensure your logo, brand colours and shapes are featured on every page and keep the tone of the copy consistent with your brand tone. Ensure the images you choose and the videos you embed reflect your brand. A good recruitment website will also convey your brand values through its content. Publish your D&I policy, use your blog to convey key messages, weave your values through the body of your website copy. Showcase your people and highlight your successes through your own copy and others’. All this helps to boost your branding and cement who you are and what you stand for as a business.
