ABOUT
Ladders Recruiter is Ladders' B2B product that aims to connect high quality opportunities to qualified candidates fast. Ladders Recruiter is currently utilized by over 25,000 recruiters seeking $100K+ candidates.
The Objectives
The business objective here was straightforward - increased paid conversions.
Paid conversions occur through 2 channels: Promoted Job Posts (buy as you go model), and Sourcing Plans (subscription model). For strategies focusing solely on user experience, please see Ladders Recruiter - User Experience.
The Strategy
To maximize conversions, I decided to break up the goal and target each conversion channel individually.
To increase Promoted Job Posts purchased, the plan was:
1. Optimizing job posting flow for paid conversions
2. Creating a landing page to aid with persuasion
To increase Sourcing Plans purchased, the plan was:
3. Creating a new stream of revenue by redesigning the sign up process
To increase Sourcing Plans purchased, the plan was:
3. Creating a new stream of revenue by redesigning the sign up process
The Scope
Researched - analyzed past conversion trends + user interviews, designed - including variants for AB test, got stakeholders buy-in, and supported engineering through specs clarification, asset handoffs and user acceptance test.
Overall Outcomes
• Increased paid conversions through eCommerce by 50%
• New landing page made up ~4% of total site traffic - increasing traffic to checkout pages
• Generated new stream of revenue - net positive for any conversions
1. Optimizing the job posting flow for paid conversions
Former Flow
To post a job, a recruiter had to go through a 5 different steps: 1. creating the job post, 2. previewing the job post, 3. adding screening questions (optional), 4. promoting the job post (opt in), 5. publishing the job post.
While most recruiters do not find the number of steps overwhelming, from user research, a significant number were confused with step 4. paid job promotion. When it comes to posting jobs, most recruiters make the mental decision of promoting the job (or not) when creating the job post. After step 2. previewing their job posts, recruiters mentioned that they were expecting the remaining steps to be "reviews" and not "decision-making" steps.
New Flow
To help optimizing the job posting experience, the following changes were made:
• Step 4. job promotion is integrated into step 1. creation of job post -- which reduces the number of required steps to 4 and any cognitive heavy steps beyond step 2. This helps recruiters streamline their workflow
• Have job promotion as an opt-out instead of opt-in option -- to help achieve the business goal of getting more paid conversions
• Visual updates to the page
• Minor copy changes to the CTAs to provide better context of what the following step will be
• On the success page (job posted), attachments of suggested candidates resumes to help recruiters get started sooner
Click through prototype:
The Date
AB test ran for a total of 90 days from Jul 2022 to Oct 2022
The Outcome
The new flow was introduced as an AB test. The AB test was conducted on Google Optimize, and concluded with the new flow producing 50% more paid conversions.
2. Creating a landing page to aid with persuasion
To support the push for promoted jobs in the above initiative, I created a supplementary sales page to convince and persuade purchase.
Info Architecture
Ladders Recruiter has 2 environments - logged in and public facing. As they serve different purposes, they thus have different navigational structures. Logged in pages are more functional, geared towards power users, while public facing pages are geared towards sales and marketing. However, for this page to be accessible, it has to be available on both environments.
Landing Page
I designed and created the landing page, including animations. In terms of layout, the strategy was to start off strong with social proof and then highlight other unique features.
The Date
Oct 2022
The Outcome
The new page made up ~4% of total site traffic, increasing traffic to the checkout/pricing pages.
3. Creating a new stream of revenue by redesigning the sign up process
Recruiters can create a Ladders Recruiter account from 2 point-of-entries: 1. From sign up forms on the different pages. 2. From pricing pages. Although Ladders Recruiter is mainly a paid product, there wasn't any way for new users to sign up as paying recruiters - all new sign ups were coming in as "free" users. The goal here is to capture "money that was left on the table" and convert purchase intent as soon as possible.
Former Flow
From sign up forms:
• New users provide personal and professional information in a 2-step sign up form
• User receives verification emails while Ladders verify their information behind the scenes
New users are not shown any paid plans and would have to navigate to pricing pages on their own
• User receives verification emails while Ladders verify their information behind the scenes
New users are not shown any paid plans and would have to navigate to pricing pages on their own
From pricing pages:
• New users indicate their purchase intent by clicking "Buy"
• User is then directed to log in page
• User is further redirected to the sign up forms, and follow the steps in the section above.
• New users indicate their purchase intent by clicking "Buy"
• User is then directed to log in page
• User is further redirected to the sign up forms, and follow the steps in the section above.
Although new users have clearly indicated their purchase intent, they weren't given the option to make the transaction
New Flow
From sign up forms:
• New users provide personal and professional information in a 2-step sign up form
• User see pricing page with an option to continue as a free user
• If user chooses to make a purchase, collect payment details and authorize charge
• User receives verification emails while Ladders verify their information behind the scenes. Once their account is approved, capture charge.
• If user chooses to make a purchase, collect payment details and authorize charge
• User receives verification emails while Ladders verify their information behind the scenes. Once their account is approved, capture charge.
From pricing pages:
• New users indicate their purchase intent by clicking "Buy"
• Collect payment details and authorize charge
• Users to complete their sign up in a 2-step sign up form
• New users indicate their purchase intent by clicking "Buy"
• Collect payment details and authorize charge
• Users to complete their sign up in a 2-step sign up form
• User receives verification emails while Ladders verify their information behind the scenes. Once their account is approved, capture charge.
Click through prototype:
Future Development CONSIDERATIONS
As Ladders has plans to support multiple seat licenses in the future, I decided to use a full page modal for the payment screen to ensure that the design is scalable without increasing cognitive load for users.
The Date
Designs were done in Nov 2022, the change is scheduled to go live Feb 2023
