2020

UX/UI Web Design and Visual Branding for Open Systems Technologies

Looking to improve the user experience on their website, modernize their visual brand, and leverage Monster's applicant tracking system (ATS), Open Systems Technologies sought out the expertise of the Monster Strategic Solutions team.

Introduction

Open Systems Technologies wanted to modernize their website and was looking for a fresh visual vibe to better align with their young and tech savvy target market. The marketing team was looking to push users to a new feature they were planning to launch – job matching – using Monster's integrated applicant tracking system (ATS) and wanted an intentional user experience designed that allowed room for future content changes.

Discovery

As a staffing agency with a dual focus – matching people in tech to careers and getting hiring managers to post their jobs, our task was to design a site that made both those experiences fluid. Considering their marketing team may want to change communications priorities in the future, coming up with a future-proofed solution that was easy to work with without us at a later late was crucial as well.

We discovered they essentially wanted to build a new visual brand start from scratch – which was a tall order for our 3 month timeline, but we were up for the challenge! There was only one colour they wanted to remain – a navy blue that was used on the original logo design, but wasn't present on their current site. A robust palate was built around that navy blue with contrasting tones and plenty of supportive colours for graphics.

Strategy

A quick audit of the current homepage helped us get aligned and prioritize changes for the updated design. There was plenty of room for improvement when it came to copy, visuals, web styles, imagery and visual hierarchy in general throughout the site.

A variety of sections were designed and pieced together strategically per page in order to guide users visually as well as with intentional copy.

Sections were designed with clear visual hierarchy in mind with two sets of primary and secondary CTAs in mind in each block. With text and links being easily editable in the CMS, their marketing team would easily be able to switch up the primary journeys without the need for a designer or developer to create or implement the changes in the future.

With a focus on custom journeys for job seekers – we created a landing page for each job category.

Furthermore – we created unique URLS from these pages to the job search page that pre-populated results based on the niche page the user was coming from.

While we wanted to ensure a smooth experience for users looking for specific jobs who may have landing on a job specific page – we also wanted to ensure they weren't funneled prematurely and always gave an option to view all jobs as well.

Creation

One of the goals of the marketing team was to use the website as a platform for testing copy. Organic results were of course important, but they also wanted to test creative copy for various campaigns.

In order to ensure differing results were more likely to be based on copy variations, the images were designed to be visually secondary for the heros on each page.

Fun and vibrant icons were custom made as a way to capture and retain attention – and replay on recognizability throughout a journey on-site and across touchpoints off-site as well.

Results

Open systems technologies now has a completely new look and feel that is more inline with current industry standard – helping them position themselves as an authority in their domain. Empowered with the ability to swap out text and images within their CMS, the marketing team now has complete control over the messaging throughout the site and are able to make changes based on current campaigns.

Challenges / Learnings

One of the biggest challenges during this project was the clients team restructuring half-way through. Not only were we attempting something grand given the timelines we had, but a month and a half in, we were meant to work with a new point of contact who had a different vision for the project. Staying optimistic and enjoying a challenge, we all shifted directions and carried on – staying on track and in budget, however looking back I would have insisted on either an extended timeline or more restrictions to the amount of changes in order to retain a higher level of outputs.

Interested in streamlining the UX on your website? Let's chat!

Send me a message sharing some information about yourself and what you're looking to achieve and I'll get back to you with next steps within 24 hours.