Testing Ideas: Employment Agency Sign up Form Landing Page - Hirefox

Hirefox is a UK based web talent (web designers, developers) agency. Very clean and sleek design. Striking. However, my first concern when I landed was the black dark background.  I'd love love love to see an A/B test of this landing page using a white or very light background color. (I'll get to the why later).

More testing ideas below.

Testing Ideas:

Header:
While the blue bubble containing the text "UK web jobs and web talent" provides some hints, the purpose of this form is not obvious. Unless you read the left text carefully, you have no idea what the form on the right is for. The inverted color scheme does not help legibility. I don't know about the UK audience, but Americans hate reading online*. It's all about speed. I'd test to see if using a stronger call to action helps increase conversion.

Instead of saying "We aim to build the UK's best web talent database and need your help"
I'd try: "Get matched with quality web jobs in the UK," or something similar.

Users don't care about helping out a company. They care about what they're gonna get.

Form Header:
The header says, "Your Details." My details for what? What do I get if I fill out this form? Again, the reason why I should fill out this form is not clear.  The subheader, "We will never pass on your details or spam you" is nice.

Form Fields:
Tab order is good.
The form fields are in 2 columns. This looks good visually, but again, I wonder how conversion rates could increase if the fields were arranged in 1 column. If you look at sign up / registration forms of the major players, they are all 1 columned layouts. That would be another test to consider.

Button Text:
This is an area to experiment as well. Right now it says "Add your details" on the top of the form, and on the button. A little redundant. I'd try testing by using different text such as: "Get matched with a job!" or "Find a quality job" 

Color Scheme:
As I mentioned in the beginning, dark landing pages give me anxiety. How often do you see yahoo, paypal, ebay, or any big name player use a black background color? Those guys do extensive testing. I think the only sites that do well with black backgrounds are the sketchy sites (you know which ones I'm talking about). Then again, techies may have less of an aversion to dark bgs. Either way, I think it's worth it to test a version using a lighter color scheme (or less dominant color).

I do love the black from an artistic standpoint, though, and the form does definitely pop.

In Closing:

The first impression of HireFox's landing page is "BEAUTIFUL!" Clean and modern aesthetics can go a long way to keep a user's interest. As with all landing pages, there is a lot of potential to improve conversion rates by testing variations. For this particular page, I suggest testing the call to action, general copy, form layout, and a lighter color scheme.

I hope these ideas can help increase someone's conversion rates! Let me know if they do.

*Side note: An international usability researcher once told me something interesting about the difference between American and Japanese web audiences. He said that Americans like to get straight to the point without reading everything on the page. Japanese, on the other hand, like to read EVERYTHING - even links to long documents such as privacy policies and terms of service. 

Note: iamalandingpagedesigner.com is in no way affiliated with hirefox. These testing ideas are merely ideas and were cooked up without any knowledge of hirefox's conversion rates.

Comments

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