NOTE: This guest post is by the great Ben Eubanks of UpstartHR. Take it away, Ben.
Let's start with a visualization, shall we? A prospective applicant stops by your career site. They try to search for a job, but they can't find out how. They finally see the little button to search, but when they get to the next page, there doesn't seem to be a way to apply for the position. Disgusted, the applicant turns away from your site and files you away as a "don't even try to apply" in their mind. You've been discarded before you were even in the running.
Is that fair? Is it your fault that they were unable to find out how to apply to your job postings? Well, it may not be, but with a new Google tool, you may be able to see that problem and correct it before other candidates end up the same way.
Google Browser Size is a new tool cooked up by Google's amazing engineers. If you go to this site and plug in your site's URL, you can check how much of your site people can see on their browsers. How does this affect you? Well, if the majority of people can't see how to apply, there's a good chance they won't apply.
Check out the Browser Size tool and test it on your own site. You may be surprised at what you find out. When I looked at my own site, I saw that about 50% of my visitors don't see all the way across my site horizontally. I could be missing some feed subscriptions from those people simply because they can't see my button.
To compare that same issue with Steve's site, you can see that more than 80% of his visitors can see his subscription button without having to scroll. I'd be willing to bet that his subscription rate is higher than mine simply on that measure alone. Plus, more than 90% get a glimpse of his HR Happy Hour logo right off the bat. How's that for promoting the show?
In the post on the Google blog, one of the project engineers talked about how they discovered the problem through their own Google Earth download page. Although a large number of people were visiting the page, there was a significant difference in the number of hits on that page and the number of software downloads. They tested the site with the Browser Size tool and saw that about 10% of people couldn't see the button to download the program.
Ten percent doesn't sound like much, but if your organization gets 1000 hits on your career page per day, that's 100 people who never even apply (assuming they had planned to). Are you sure you want to be turning them away before you get a chance to see their qualifications?
Ben Eubanks is an HR professional from Huntsville, AL. He lives much of his life online. Don't believe it? Catch him on LinkedIn, Twitter, RocketHR, or via email. His blog, UpstartHR, is about many things, including HR, leadership, and zombies.