How To Buy A Recruitment Website?

Where do you even start? Probably by typing into Google, “How to buy a website for my recruitment agency?”. All jokes aside, let us talk you through some points you’ll want to consider before you reach out to a web developer and how to make that final decision. 

As recruitment marketers and agency owners, understanding how to purchase a recruitment website that aligns with your business as it is now and how it will grow over the next 5 years is incredibly tough. How do you even plan for that? This comprehensive guide will walk you through the process, how much time and money to invest in the project, the timelines, and how to ensure the end product is fit for purpose and helps to bring in new clients & candidates, new talent for the agency and makes your stamp on the sector you recruit for.

Define Your Website Objectives

Before diving into the market, before talking to digital design agencies, it's essential to outline what you want your recruitment website to achieve. Are you looking to attract more candidates, improve client engagement, attract top performing recruitment consultants or establish your agency as a thought leader within your niche? I’m guessing all of them? Setting clear objectives will guide your decision-making process, from choosing the right platform to selecting features that align with your goals. 

Set A Rough Budget 

How much does a recruitment website cost? I understand it can be hard to set a budget until you’ve had a few conversations with digital design agencies and freelance web developers but try to set a rough budget. Typically you’ll be looking at around £1,500 - £4,500 for a WordPress website and around £4,000 - £10,000 for a medium sized Angular, Vue, React or standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript website. For a larger recruitment agency website with 100+ pages you’ll be looking around £10,000 - £30,000. Also what kind of payment plan are you looking for? Are you looking to buy from the website is one go (the best value option) or opt for a pay monthly plan (the more expensive option)?

Know Your Audience

Understanding the needs and behaviours of your target audience - be it candidates or clients - is key to creating a website that resonates with them. What do you candidates need from your website? What are clients looking for from a recruitment partner?

Have a think about the types of companies you’re targeting, have a look at their websites. Who are you targeting in those companies? Are you targeting directors, HR managers, talent acquisition teams, direct hiring managers? What do these people look for in a recruitment website and from an agency partner? HR managers will look for pages around how you assess and treat candidates, they’ll look for testimonials from candidates, the communities you create, policies around DEI & removing unconscious bias from the recruitment process. Talent acquisition teams will look for a recruitment partner who doesn’t overstep their mark and works closely with them to understand their company, culture, needs and your ability to close hard to fill roles. Hiring managers probably just want to check you’re recruiting for similar positions to their live vacancy and you have candidates you can send them right now. 

Recruitment marketers should conduct audience research to identify the functionalities and content that will engage their specific demographic, such as job search filters, career advice blogs, or industry insights. 

Look For Inspiration

Before you approach a digital design agency or a freelance web developer you’ll need to have a pretty good idea of what your website will look like. This will help them massively when it comes to them giving a realistic and concrete proposal based exactly on what you need. Maybe look at a selection of website design styles to see what would best suit your brand.

Look at the websites of your top 20 clients - are there common themes with their images, layout, colour palettes and fonts? Then look at your top 20 competitors - trawl through their websites paying attention to the pages they have, the tone, style, colour palettes, fonts, images, video, etc. Have a look at the pages on competitor agency websites. What pages do you need on your recruitment site?

Now add some of your personality! Your website should reflect the market you recruit for but it also needs to reflect your business and personality too. 

Recruitment Website Integrations

Do you need your website integrated into any of your recruitment technology? Does it need to integrate with your CRM? Maybe it would be useful if all live jobs were automatically populated on your website or maybe it would save consultants time if applications went directly into the CRM? What about other integrations? Have you considered a chatbot? Or a virtual chat system? Or WhatsApp for Business? Write down a list of the software you use and ask your developer how it could integrate with your recruitment website.

Choose the Right Platform

Selecting the right website platform is critical for scalability and functionality. Consider platforms that are specifically designed for recruitment agencies, offering features such as job posting and integrations with application tracking systems (ATS) or your CRM. Additionally, ensure the platform is SEO-friendly to enhance your site's visibility in search engine results, driving more traffic to your site.

You’ll typically have 4 main platforms to choose from…

1) A low code or no code website. There’s a few recruitment specific players in this space but I’d recommend opting for Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy if you’re looking at a site like this. They’ll be much better value and you’ll be getting a much better product when compared to some of the low code recruitment specific options out there. This is a great option if you’re just launching your recruitment agency and want to keep initial costs low. There’s a load of YouTube tutorials talking you through how to set them up. 

2) WordPress + PHP website, created by a WordPress developer. Another great option for smaller recruitment agencies, maybe a one person company who’s been around for a year or so or for a small recruitment agency with up to a half dozen staff. You could learn the platform yourself quite easily and launch your own site in a few weeks but I’d suggest using a professional WordPress developer for this. The content management system is a little complicated and you will need to dedicate time to learn how it all works but it will allow you to update everything on your website. This fully customisable option is great but it also allows you to break the whole of your website so be careful. There are plenty of recruitment specific WordPress developers who could help you out here so have a think about if it's the platform for you.  

3) A plain HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery website. A little rarer to see these days but still a great option if you’re looking for a static website - a website you don’t want to or need to update on a regular basis. 

4) The last option would be a fully designed & developed recruitment website by a professional web or software developer who could create a more complex solution using a framework or library such as React, Angular or Vue with a fully formed backend attached. The developer would typically add their own content management system or a headless CMS to allow you to update all or selected parts of the website all by yourself. The benefit of an in-built CMS is that it will be super easy to use and impossible to break it. This option is great for companies who are above 10 staff. 

Prioritise User Experience (UX)

The usability of your website can significantly impact how visitors feel about your website and you want to ensure you can guide clients & candidates on a journey through your website. Along that journey you'll want to persuade them that you’re the agency partner for them. A site with intuitive navigation, fast loading times, and mobile optimisation ensures a positive user experience, encouraging visitors to explore your offerings and take action.

Your freelance web developer should be able to put you in touch with their UX/UI designer who can provide you with Figma templates based on your brief or you can of course source your own web designer who can provide you with suitable designs based on your brief. 

Focus on Content Strategy

Content is king in the digital world, and a robust content strategy can set your recruitment website apart. Create valuable, SEO-optimised content that addresses the pain points and interests of your audience. This can include blog posts, industry reports, video content, reviews and candidate resources. Pepper your content with relevant keywords and phrases, which will improve your search engine rankings, making it easier for your clients & candidates to find you.

Once again your digital design agency should be able to provide you with someone who can write content for you. You’ll specifically want someone who specialises in writing web copy and blog posts (ideally for the recruitment industry), as opposed to someone who works with advertising copy or a journalist or reporter. There are lots of great recruitment content writers out there and please get in touch if you need a recommendation. 

Implement SEO Best Practices

If you’re transitioning from one recruitment website platform to another or having your website fully redesigned and rebuilt you’ll want to run an SEO audit on your current website and then 3-6 months after your new recruitment website has been launched. Test where your website currently sits for a selection of 40-80 keywords, along with running relevant reports from GA4. 

I’d recommend speaking with a professional SEO consultant for a full audit of your current and new website. Your web design agency or freelance web developer should be able to recommend an SEO professional to you. You’ll need to get an SEO consultant who is well versed in the platform you’re using, whether that’s low code, WordPress or Angular. 

Recommendations

Have you come across any websites you liked the look of? Check the footer of the website and it may tell you who designed it. Also ask friends and recruitment partners if they can recommend a good web developer. Referrals are a great way to find a brilliant web developer! 

Questions

Put together a list of relevant questions you want to ask your web developer so you can make a fully informed decision. Suitable questions could be…

• Can you show us some examples of your work? 
• Which platforms do you specialise in? WordPress? Low code / no code? React, Angular, etc.? 
• How long does it take to put together the proposal? 
• How long would it take to build the website from the briefing stage to final deployment? 
• How much would the website roughly cost?
• Can you recommend an SEO consultant? 
• Can you recommend a copywriter? 
• Can you recommend a designer? 
• How does the process work? 
• Can you integrate our website with our recruitment CRM?
• Can you integrate our recruitment agency website with a chatbot?
• Can you integrate our recruitment site with a virtual chat application? 
• Can you integrate our agency site with LinkedIn? 
• Can you integrate our recruitment firm website with Google Analytics 4? 
• Who would be our main point of contact throughout the process? 
• Do you provide support after the website is deployed? 
• Can you migrate our current website URLs to the new website? 
• Do you provide hosting for our recruitment site? 
• How do you ensure our agency site is secure? 
• Do you provide us with backups of the website, in case something goes wrong? 

Also have a read through our frequently asked questions here.

Get A Few Quotes 

Our penultimate stage! Reach out to a few recruitment industry specific web developers and set up a 30 minute video call with each of them. Run through your list of questions and ask them to talk you through what they provide.  

Make The Right Decision & Choose the Right Person

Get a feel of what they’re like as a person over email and during your video call. Remember you could be working with this person quite closely over the next few months and on an ongoing basis to support your website thereafter. Once you’ve had a chat with a few companies, asked all the questions, then you can finally decide who you get on well with and who’s providing the best solution for what you need at the best price. 

If you have any questions on how we can help you in the design & development of your new recruitment site then please get in touch with us here.