About Hireology
The process of hiring and payroll doesn’t have to be painful. It should be something the whole team loves. For 10 years, Chicago-based Hireology has been centered around candidates and the collective group of humans that form a company. After they expanded their HR solutions through a business acquisition, their website needed fine-tuning to match its refocused messaging, ensuring that every system, including their website, put people first. With its core target industries of retail automotive, healthcare, professional consumer services, and hospitality, the shift from general manager as decision maker to hiring manager as influencer was a big change—one that wasn’t yet reflected in their website. Solid Digital came in to help from backend to front, ensuring that every piece of Hireology’s story was told through visuals and fully-reimagined UX.
The Project
With a unique SaaS that put recruiting and hiring all in one platform, Hireology needed the new website to tell the story of their transition, with an extra emphasis on their product features.
The goals Hireology set out to accomplish with a new website were five-fold:
- Elevate the design and evolve the brand.
- Build a more powerful lead generation tool with a clear strategic user journey.
- Convey the right story, showcasing Hireology as an industry leader, with clarified, value-added key differentiators.
- Create a website that represents Hireology well, and makes them proud.
- Enable the website for future iterations or to quickly pivot to create the ultimate marketing tool.
With a Website to Match
Hireology has been in business for 10 years, growing its HR solutions through acquiring additional businesses. It is now a full, one-stop-shop solution, and after acquiring EmployUs, the companies using Hireology can leverage their own employees and networks for candidate referrals. Everything from pre-hire to payroll management gives users an easy-to-use solution with guided capabilities and programs.
Let’s Work Together
When Solid Digital came on board with Hireology, the website was already set up with Elementor, and Hireology had done some heavy lifting with the copy and content. The tested Solid Digital process of “Learn, Strategize, Create, and Grow” was followed. During the learning and discovery phase, Solid Digital studied competitors in the HR solutions space, had Hireology complete the brand personality slider, and made moodboards to help narrow down stylistic selections and typography choices that would soon reflect the new Hireology identity. The old site, while working decently, felt too templated to Hireology—they wanted something more bespoke with distinct visuals and subtle, unique changes to make them stand out just enough. When the angular shapes and artistic designs Solid Digital first presented to Hireology were too modern, the team collaborated and strategized until a visual identity emerged, fully focused on approachability for the business owners and operators using their services (and their website).
Hireology reached out to Solid Digital to help with several pain points that included a too-casual visual identity, underdeveloped lead-generation, unclear key differentiators, and a crowded website backend that made any changes and adjustments difficult. Additionally, the website didn’t reflect the professional, person-centered ethos that Hireology wanted to convey.
Once More, With Feeling
Finally, the graphics, illustrations, color palette, and typography chosen for the website all fit squarely into Hireology’s present and future goals. The website photos, a product of a photoshoot with Solid Digital’s guidance, now center around people using Hireology’s software, with interspersed, stylized versions of the product graphic. The smart, semi-quirky graphics zero in on the scientific and studious “-ology” aspect of the company, with a rounded, geometric typography that holds a hint of fun. Page backgrounds were carefully balanced, with some dark and some white to make gentle contrast, rather than harsh dichotomies. Every style element, based on Solid Digital options, pushes the envelope by half-steps, still allowing Hireology to fit well within the professional HR solution space.
I Can See Clearly Now
In addition to visual changes, there were plenty of adjustments to make on the back end of the website. After 10 years of business, Hireology had a massive website to wade through from a variety of past vendors’ attempts at website user flows. With over 20 landing pages in varying designs and a vast amount of outdated or unused Wordpress plugins, there wasn’t an easy way for Hireology IT or its marketing team to update or maintain their current website. Solid Digital came in, cleared out the plugins, narrowed down the landing pages with a few distinct, but customizable (and funneled/focused) templates, and made sure that the entire website was clutter-free and cataloged.
The website “spring-clean” spread to the user experience, as well. Hireology’s key differentiators were buried within content on a variety of pages, and didn’t allow for easy scanning or reading. The new wireframes outlined a user journey with clear calls to action as well as a pared down version of the core content; the website shifted from information overload to cleaned-up copy changes, especially within the navigation. Subsections allowed for drop-downs and redirections for more information, to simplify the visual space on each page. Overall, better section hierarchy with reorganized micro-copy improved the website’s communication and pathways for users. Plugins such as Hubspot and Chili Piper were integrated easily to gather user data for simplified lead generation.
To better show key differentiators, Solid Digital’s team also leveraged testimonials, G2 ratings, and employment awards—all vital to the user’s decision-making process. With the social proof and multiple validations placed near a Request Demo button, a landing page became another missing piece in creating a website that converts. The wireframes cleared up pages to create focus and guide pathways, keeping it comfortable for users to browse, even with added uniqueness through new visual design elements.
"I appreciate that their team got to know our brand and our company in-depth. They really looked into what sets us apart from other companies."
Planning for the Future
The ability to pivot or even update the website was vital to Hireology’s plan for the future. Solid Digital helped facilitate this in three ways:
- Ready the website. Through cleaning up old plug-ins, cutting to core elements of the content, and creating customizable landing pages that allow for clear user pathways, Solid Digital made a versatile website, ready for anything.
- Ready Hireology’s crew. Hireology’s team is now fully-trained in the CMS so they can utilize every Solid Digital-built template and update the site themselves. To verify that the training took root, Solid Digital had Hireology enter content themselves and checked it over to make sure nothing was missed in training.
- Ready for steady growth. Every piece of design, including colors, typography, and icons, were given in full to Hireology so they could make new iterations where and when they needed.
After these were implemented, Solid Digital helped Hireology determine future objectives, create custom KPIs and build a plan to improve and leverage their new site through the Digital Growth program. One such goal includes prioritizing company growth in the healthcare sector. With in-house management (as opposed to hiring another developer or vendor for site updates) Hireology is able to squeeze as much value out of their site as possible. With the new site, Hireology is able to fully communicate their new positioning and branding, on their terms and with their team.
Do-It-Yourself, But Better
Ultimately, the new website allowed Hireology to increase productivity through easy, internal site updates. This kind of growth is vital while they reposition and continue to fold their newest companies into the mix and expand their customer base. The new website design also helped Hireology reduce costs by avoiding hiring extra vendors, with the site organization duties resting securely in-house. Solid Digital provided the knowledge and tools they needed in order to maintain it themselves.
Through collaboration and partnership, with a dash of encouragement and training, Solid Digital empowered Hireology to use their newly-revamped website as the ultimate marketing tool.
