West Michigan Works! is a non-profit organization helping job seekers find gainful employment & employers find qualified talents in West Michigan, supplying grants, training, and much more. With a vast wealth of information to simplify a complex and confusing process, West Michigan Works! It is one part of the statewide Michigan Works! system.
West Michigan Works! focuses on making the stressful process of breaking into the job market accessible for all. With our successful request for proposal (RFP) submission and interview process, it was our turn to ease the stress on their audience of job seekers and employers.
Their website contained multiple subdomains, making finding extensive resources offered challenging. We grounded them in data to ensure all our improvements were logical. Performing user experience (UX) testing before digging into the build allowed us insight into what users were looking for and where they encountered blocks in finding it.
Increase in Page Views
Increase in Users
Decrease in Bounce Rate
Through a split focus on the employer and job seeker subdomains, we performed comprehensive testing to identify major obstacles in information accessibility. We performed:
This testing allowed us to identify informational barriers in finding the necessary information and other obstacles that hindered users’ ability to complete the tasks they needed to do.
After discovering how to better architect the information to suit real users, we went to work on constructing a clean design emphasizing accessibility. Between the color coding, the addition of clickable buttons, and a clear UX language to guide users through the website, we laid a solid foundation to begin the new build.
The information between the different areas is hyper-specific to the employer and job seeker user groups. For the most direct browsing experience, we created alternate logos for each side of the site and carried over their color-coded UI, so there is no question of where you’re on the website.
With the solidified design, we went to work consolidating the multisite. Using one centralized domain makes all information simpler to find, search, and manage. To maintain a clear division in the service areas, we added color coding to the website with alternate navigations and logos to emphasize where you are: in the brand parent, employers, or job seekers area.
With a varied audience that could potentially have disabilities, we wanted to accommodate anyone that could be visiting. So, adding the AccessiBe plugin to make them legally compliant with accessibility standards was a no-brainer. This feature allows users to dynamically update text size and contrast, a screen reader, and other features.
Our marketing team deeply analyzed the content for SEO optimization. Bolstering the changes with feedback gained from user testing, we evaluated the current content to identify and improve areas with the highest SEO potential and maximize internal linking. This allowed us to create more synergy within the content as a whole; since it is a primarily informational website, that’s one of its core functions.
We didn’t stop there — we significantly updated the navigation menu structure to make information more accessible immediately from anywhere on the website.
With our extensive updates, we crafted an accessible website that focuses on easing the worries of employers and job seekers. As we continue our partnership with West Michigan Works!, we look forward to further nuanced updates that result in significant improvements.
