Although only 3 ½ years old, our previous website (2013-2016) had been struggling to make an impact for a little while. Our message had become convoluted, it wasn’t overly mobile friendly and it just didn’t provide much value.

To keep things current we tried fresh copy, tinkering with the design and tweaking what we had, but it didn’t quite work, so, towards the start of 2015 we brainstormed new site ideas which could properly showcase our work whilst still keeping our well-loved recruitment blog at the forefront.

Discovery

As a business we surprised ourselves at just how quickly things evolved, from just managing recruitment ad campaigns in 2013 we’d progressed to offering services spanning the complete recruitment spectrum, from career microsites to managed recruitment functions, international media buying and more.

After consulting with staff, conducting Q&As with audiences and sorting through a decade’s worth of stories, interviews, insight and general news content we were able to build a clear picture of how our site was being used and what people liked. It became apparent fairly quickly that people loved the content on our recruitment blog, but were left not fully understanding our offerings. This feedback formed the building blocks for the new site.

Goodbye Guru Careers / Guru Careers Network

Multiple sites simply diluted our message therefore we set out to consolidate our news and product sites into a new centralised domain (https://weare.guru). With content and services under one roof it would afford us greater control internally and provide a better user journey.

Concept

Utilising our recently acquired insight we kicked things off with nothing more than a sketch pad and pencil, scoping each page element and the structure of the site. Our focus from the outset was to improve usability and communication whilst retaining strong interest around our news content.

 Visual

In keeping with the spirit of legacy sites we decided to keep a consistent look and feel, retaining key elements whilst re-introducing past loved ones (such as Norm Cat on the home page – previous web builds included commissioned photoshoots for frogs and dogs).

With the mainstream use of video, we felt this format would literally help bring the new site to life and provided a natural evolution on images used in previous sites.

Summary.

As the ninth web build since our inception in 2002, this has certainly been one of the most comprehensive overhauls and will hopefully continue to help us stand out as thought leaders in our field.

It’s been a big 12 months bringing this to life, I hope you like the changes and get enjoyment and insight from our eye-catching news stories.

Please share #WeAreGuru 🙂