SalaryExpert.com Website Design Review
Unclear Strategic Intent, Non-existent Content Webification and Relationship Building are All Letting Visitors Run Around in Circles on SalaryExpert.com, or Worse, Just Run Off the Site with No Reason to Return
Like a company without an org chart, SalaryExpert.com leaves the visitor wondering who’s in charge. Part of a loosely-stitched network of sites, SalaryExpert.com brings in subscription revenues to the parent company Baker Thomsen Associates (BTA is in turn a subsidiary of the Economic Research Institute) from both HR professionals and career minded individuals.
The site’s landing page/marketplace strategy is distracted by hub-like linking behavior, sending users all over the network. While the site’s foundations rest on a solid website design base in Labeling, Readability and Content Organization, the top level website design criteria decisions seem to have been made by an executive committee that spent too long at lunch. Strategic Intent, Content Webification and Relationship Building are all letting visitors run around in circles, or worse, just run off the site with no reason to return.
- Unclear Strategic Intent—users are continuously sent off-site.
- Non-existent Content Webification and Relationship Building lose visitors and increase customer acquisition costs.
- Solid design base underpins a site ready for strategic growth.
- User task depth was a success—all tasks were possible to fulfill with relative ease.
- The Affordance, Labeling and Language and Aesthetics of the were all appropriate to its audience.
SalaryExpert.com’s Mequoda Scorecard
1. Strategic Intent – C
While on first glance the strategic intent of SalaryExpert.com would seem clear, after clicking around a bit I realized I was actually quite confused. This site is part of the Economic Research Institute’s network, including Baker Thomsen Associates, SalariesReview.com and PAQ Services, among others. The industry stays the same, HR and market research, but the target audience and business model changes for each of these business subsidiaries. SalaryExpert.com is just one of the ways that ERI is creating revenues from their core competency—HR expertise. But what, exactly, is the strategic intent of SalaryExpert.com? Is it a marketplace or an Editorial Hub?
If using a marketplace strategy, I should have seen a clear description of the information products and quick funneling to the appropriate sales page. With a broad range of price points and target audience (ranging from $29 for the individual to well over $2000 for a professional HR subscription) this is a difficult enough task as it is. While this functionality was present, I also found that almost all the navigation links sent me off-site. While I figured out with a little sleuthing that the other sites were owned by the same company, it would not be immediately clear to the casual user, and creates a very frustrating sensation as I kept wondering how I got there and annoyingly clicking the back button.
And if the site is using an editorial hub strategy, with free content to draw in users, with the spokes of the metaphorical wheel used to drive the traffic to the revenue-generating satellite sites, then where was the free content? I couldn’t find much. Mostly I felt like I kept hitting walls, either sales pages for this site, or homepages of other sites. I felt like I was in a sieve and kept pouring out the bottom.
2. Content Webification – D
What is the content available at SalaryExpert.com? A large database of detailed salary information that can be sliced and diced by such criteria as job title, education, industry, geography, company size and more. Is this content information that can be displayed differently online than in an old-school print media format? Yes. Has SalaryExpert.com done this basic content webification? Ummm….
The trouble is not that the content isn’t webified. There is a search tool, and I see that they know the criteria to slice the information by. The problem is that it just isn’t done very well. The free tool—the one that is supposed to make me feel that there is a lot of data, well organized, and that the results will be worth paying money to get—is hard to use.
- The tool uses a drop down with about 1,000 job titles. This is too long, and simply difficult to keep my mouse on.
- The results for the “enter job description” were ridiculously off base.
- The next screen didn’t tell me how long the total form would be (three screens).
- The third screen asked me questions that seemed very irrelevant and kind of confusing (they changed as the job changed, but the gist is they asked questions that seemed more geared towards market research for OSHA than anything that would determine my salary).
- The results page was OK, with the range displayed at the top. But it required a lot of scrolling down and didn’t have options such as “Print,” “Email” or “Save.”
In other words, I know that I am judging the free tool, but it was too hard to use and didn’t give me much faith that the paid version would be worth the money. The information on the site isn’t well webified. The search tool was just as difficult as pawing through a 1,000 page reference book. This lack of usability is likely to scare away customers.
The tool uses a drop down with about 1,000 job titles. This is too long, and simply difficult to keep my mouse on.
3. Relationship Building – D
The relationship building on SalaryExpert.com is kept to commerce-related activities. I have a shopping cart, and I can sign in and save reports when I purchase a subscription. This lack of imagination is not going to hold my interest. The reason the site gets an F, is because the shopping cart model just isn’t enough for relationship building tools on a website that is going to see many of its sales from users on the third—seventh visit. There is no free newsletter for me to sign up for, no way for me to personalize the site so that when I return I will see headlines specific to my interests/industry—with such a broad audience and high-likelihood of tire-kickers, these two steps are simple must haves. Otherwise the traffic is going to simply flow off the site, never to return. What a waste.
4. Community Building – F
What does an HR professional call “community?” Answer: networking.
I asked that question because knowing all the sites dedicated to nothing more than networking, either career or social (Linked In, Friendster, etc…) I can’t believe that SalaryExpert.com, attracting an audience of verifiable networking junkies—HR professionals and career-climbers—is letting this opportunity, this incredible core strength of the Web, to just slip by, unattempted, unexploited, just un-done!
After that rant, the grade of F is earned in this category because there are no community building tools on SalaryExpert.com.
5. Persistent Navigation – B
SalaryExpert.com is like a precocious child, it spelled all the words right but created a paragraph that makes no grammatical sense. What I mean is that because the navigation is persistent across the site we should be seeing an A in this category. But more than half of these persistent navigation links send the user off site without any obvious organizational or visual indications. So instead we have a confusing navigation scheme with too many levels.
The levels:
- The very top is on site housekeeping, such as Shopping Cart, Sign in and My Account.
- The second level is global navigation, these links go to other sites in the network, although there is no indication that they will do this, they are placed under the SalaryExpert.com logo and the language seems to indicate they will link to content within the site.
- There are bulleted links within the nameplate, for example “Salary Increase Survey,” ALL of which go offsite.
- The third level are indeed links to pages within the site—well some of them are. These are buttons with drop downs, the first “Salary Calculators” lists four links that stay on the site, but the link right next to it, “Salary Surveys” lists six links that take me to ERI—the parent site. The next button, “Salary Reports,” lists six links with three staying on the site and three going to the sister site SalariesReview.com.
- All the persistent navigation on the left hand navigation bar stays on site. Finally, a safe place to click.
Result? A confusing navigation scheme.
Several different sets of navigation… a confusing navigation scheme.
6. Task Depth – A
The basic user tasks on this site will be to find salary information, find price points for different levels of information access and size of data (number of job descriptions, geography, company size, industry etc….) and of course to either make the purchase or contact a sales rep. All of these tasks were possible to fulfill on SalaryExpert.com
7. Affordance – B
The Affordance on SalaryExpert.com is mostly clear, with the standard indications for links used well: blue underlines within the text, bold or bulleted links in lists, color changes or underlining on mouseover, etc…. The glitches are the pull-down lists on the third level of the top navigation. These are difficult for many users to manipulate, manual dexterity does matter. And of course the complete lack of any visual indication that many links will open a new site. Confusing, frustrating, annoying… these are not words that earn an A in the Affordance category.
8. Labeling and Language – A
A few words from SalaryExpert.com:
- Salary Calculators
- Executive Compensation
- Non-Profit Compensation
- HR Education
- Wage Reports
- International Salaries
- Salary Data for Employees
Result on the Labeling and Language criteria of the Mequoda Website Scorecard? A! The language here is easy to understand, includes a good representation of keywords and phrases and is audience centric.
9. Readability (Content Density) – A
Most of the content on SalaryExpert.com is either a sales letter, or an example report of what I would get if I purchased. Therefore readability is even more important than in a more editorial site, since if I can’t read easily I certainly am not going to buy.
The pages were uncluttered, with a good use of white space, a nicely readable column width and font size. Other graphic tools employed to improve readability were light backgrounds (did not impair contrast), judicious use of bold headlines, boxes around sidebar content, bullets and one graphic per content page.
10. Organization – A
SalaryExpert.com has delegated tasks in homepage real estate like a high-powered executive. The business tasks are often revenue generating, or in some way direct the user to fulfill the strategic goals of the business owner. The primary user task is getting the content—in this case salary data—that the user is searching for.
- Upper Left
- User Tasks: content navigation links
- Business Tasks: logo; network navigation links
- Upper Right
- User Tasks: “Shopping Cart” and “Your Account”; content navigation links
- Business Tasks: network navigation links; about us
- Lower Left
- User Tasks: content navigation links; search tool
- Business Tasks: testimonials (sales copy)
- Lower Right
- User Tasks: content navigation links
- Business Tasks: Links to product sales landing pages
11. Content Freshness – F
Nowhere on SalaryExpert.com did I see anything telling me how often the content was updated. The salary data here could be 10 years old as far as I know. But that is really more of a product issue. The Content Freshness criteria is really asking the question “Is there a reason for the user to come back to the site frequently?” And the answer here, is a resounding “No.” No “News,” “Updates” or “Latest,” nothing at all that either indicates a sense of urgency (a great trick for the sales process) or that I should return to get more information later that day or the next (important for a long sales process or simply keeping the cost of acquiring a customer down). The site has either a non-updating schedule, or an unclear schedule, either one earning an F on this Website Scorecard criteria.
12. Load Time – C
SalaryExpert.com has a download time of 43.7 seconds on a 56k modem as rated by the Web Page Analyzer. Scoring a C, for under 50 seconds, on the Mequoda website scorecard.
13. Aesthetics – A
The target audiences—both career-minded individuals and HR professionals—will expect a corporate-style site design… think tones of black, blue, grey and some stock art. The aesthetic sense of SalaryExpert.com has not strayed from the path, and serves a design that matches the user mental model well, earning an A in this criteria.
14. Brand Preference – C
As mentioned more than a few times in this review, SalaryExpert.com sends a confusing message to the user by continuously presenting links off site to differently branded satellite sites in the network. From Economic Research Institute to Baker Thomsen Associates to the almost identical twin site SalariesReview.com, I’m left with the inconclusive results: brand? which brand?
Since the network of sites are all branded with similar logo treatment and with a little reading the user can see that they are part of the same company, SalaryExpert.com earns a C in the Brand Preference category. The site sends a confusing branding message.
As mentioned more than a few times in this review, SalaryExpert.com sends a confusing message to the user by continuously presenting links off site to differently branded satellite sites in the network.
Conclusion
The network of sites that include SalaryExpert.com as a marketplace and/or hub have not done a terrible job on website design, even though this review might read otherwise. I was pleased with many of the sales pages, the bundled packages, the ways of selling the same amount of information to difference customer segments. These business strategy elements are not covered in a Mequoda Website Design Scorecard.
If the site architecture and design elements, such as Relationship Building and Content Webification, were fixed, this site would be “beating them off with a stick,” as my grandmother used to say. Just brush off that business suit and shine those shoes, and SalaryExpert.com will be power-lunching through the next Mequoda Review.
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