Why is web analytics important for recruitment websites?

by in Analytics

Nowadays, almost every recruitment business has its own website. Whilst some of them use it more regularly and consider it a vital part of their digital marketing strategy, others, on the other hand, don’t really look at their website.

When we talk to recruiters about web analytics and we examine where their website visitors come from or which pages they’ve viewed, the response we often get is that they already know how many visits their website receives or that they only use the website to explain to clients who they are. The general attitude is that they are not really interested in analytics.

If you believe that recruitment web analytics is not a key aspect of your business, read the notes below to learn about the importance of web performance analysis for recruitment websites and start making a better investment in your online visibility.

Web analytics is not just the number of visitors on your website

It is one of the areas to look at first while identifying a trend in web visits. It might be useful to understand whether you receive more or fewer visitors than other career sites. If you want to learn more, you can download our benchmark report for recruitment websites, and compare your site performance with the average data within the same industry.

Having Google Analytics implemented on your site can give you much more insight into user behaviour. One of them is where visitors to your website come from. It’s a significant area to look at, for example, if your target audience is based in the UK but you have lots of visits coming from Russia or the USA, it probably means that something somewhere is not quite right and you might be wasting your money on driving the wrong audience or it could be that your website might be affected by spam.

Another useful area to look at in web analytics is identifying how users find your website online. Do the majority view it from an organic search by typing keywords in search engines or do they access it directly because they already know the URL address? If you send any regular newsletters or share posts on social platforms, it’s worth checking whether it drives people’s interest and they visit your website after reading content on these channels.

Usually, we say that the website has a ‘healthy’ traffic when the majority of users access it from organic searches. This is because organic traffic has a huge impact on ranking in search results and it is also represented by ‘free’ visits that bring the relevant audience to the site, which is keen to convert on your website with users applying for your jobs, submitting their CVS or clients contacting you wanting to advertise their vacancies.

“We know how many applications we receive, we don’t need analytics”

This statement is quite often heard from recruiters; however, do you know how many people show interest in your jobs but don’t actually apply? Do you know your percentage of missed opportunities because something isn’t working on your website?

Analytics on website

When we look at a website, we also analyse how much time a user spends viewing your content, what pages they view, if they followed the user journey on the site. You might think that your career site is easy to navigate and use but it may not be the case for every user. Instead of assuming that everything is fine, check the analytics to see if users actually follow the steps on the website that you expect them to do. In most cases, you might think that when a user lands on your site, he/she will click through to your job page, search for a job, click the apply button and then submit the application form. If this happens then that’s great, your website is working. Yet what if it’s not? Do you know where people drop off? Analytics can give you the answers to this.

Google Analytics helps you to identify how many users were interested in a job and how many of them actually completed the application form. If the difference is relatively high, it means that the problem might be with the form on your website. Your form could be too long (too many fields to fill in) or might not work properly and users are shown an error message when they try to submit their application.

On the other hand, you might be losing opportunities simply because your recruitment website speed on mobile devices is very poor. People don’t want to wait that long for the page to load on their Smartphone. If you have 40% or more mobile users accessing your site, then you have to think about how many job seekers or clients you might be missing out on.

In summary, if you are a recruitment agency, don’t ignore the importance of analytics on your website. Hopefully, this article provides you with enough reasons why you can benefit from monitoring the web performance and why checking your career site is important.