Creative Direction + Ux Research

ZipRecruiter Website: Audit

Challenge

After about a decade of amazing growth—and one-off updates—ZipRecruiter.com was a little disjointed. Even though we spent millions of dollars a month to drive traffic there, the site as a whole had no formalized owner or process. With the company marching towards an IPO, I made it my mission to make our website a priority.

The Pitch

Through some reluctance, I convinced marketing leaders to prioritize our marketing site by outlining the problem, illustrating the value to the business, and proposing a plan to get it done without impacting other initiatives.

Some of the most effective slides from my presentation are shown below. The first two illustrated how disjointed things had become. The second 2 communicated the value that a design system would bring to the designers and FE devs.

Overarching Objectives

  • Build and maintain a world-class website that positions ZipRecruiter as an industry-leader embodying innovation, quality, and expertise.
  • Reduce the time it takes to publish website creative
  • Create a design system

Audit Process

  1. Scope URLs and audit them (document and present findings)
  2. Recommend and vet what to keep / change (user tests to validate as needed)
  3. Define and prioritize projects (roadmap)
  4. Define and vet V1 cross-department collaboration processes
  5. Brief and execute the work (2-3 projects at a time)
  6. Document and report (project outcomes, processes, and design system)

Scope & Assignments

We limited the scope to the site navigation and 45 high-traffic URLs and divided the work into 3 areas:

  • UX + IA (me)
  • Messaging + tone (copywriter)
  • Styles + UI elements (designers)

Involving our FE engineers at this phase was crucial to creating a dynamic of shared ownership. They were excited to help document findings and build the design system and website that our brand deserved.

The Results

  • Identified a foundational set of UI elements to build as components
  • Numerous copy corrections implemented
  • A list of pages that needed design love
  • Identified new business opportunities and UX problems
  • Prioritized the work by level of effort and potential impact

Credits

Designers: Erik Arildsson, Christina Van Lepp
Copywriter: Kate Seldman
Front End Partners: Weston Radcliffe, Jeff Wei, Gaby Dilley
Creative Ops: Jenn Yang