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The Importance of Good Structure and Site Planning
Posted in: Databases, Opinions, Services by CodersCode on February 25, 2011
When it comes to creating the most effective websites, it’s crucial that they’re built on solid foundations. The better the structure and website planning, the more efficient the solution.
Take a recent example, SafeREF, which is a soon-to-be launched service helping recruiters and businesses gain references on candidates. One field which has caused some debate is ‘Job Title’ and how users will tackle this field.
The easiest way of managing the Job Title field is to have a free text field for the users. In that way the user can enter their job title themselves. However there are problems with this approach:
- Users are prone to error, so you’ll quickly end up with 100′s of options
- Job titles can often be unique to a particular role or business
- If you want to search by job title, a ‘free text field’ will be difficult because of the range and variety of titles in circulation
- There are geographic issues as some countries prefer CEO to Managing Director, Vice President to Senior Manager and CTO to IT Director, yet these are essentially the same roles
So, if these are the problems, how do you tackle this issue? Locking down choice is not the answer either. If you limit choice too much then you might get user drop-out or confusion. You can’t force people to call themselves something that they’re not!
In the end, therefore, you need guided solutions. Where choice is available, but is audited or limited. The two neatest ways of achieving this are:
- Offering users greater choice but grouping similar titles in the back-end (unseen) and prompting them as they type to supply correct information
- Streamlining choice through job types and visibly grouping them together
Whatever the solution is, it is crucial that two things then happen. Firstly job titles need to be audited when they come in to ensure quality of data. This can be done relatively easily – once it becomes part of a process rather than an ad-hoc end of the week task. Secondly, the choice of titles needs to be audited so if changes are needed, then they can be actioned easily.
Only then can you be confident that you have a ‘clean’ database and when you search for candidates with similar seniority and skills, that you find all that you are looking for in the database.
It’s clear to us that these kinds of issues need strategic input from the developer. That’s why businesses working with CodersCode get a high quality service with plenty of consideration from our end. Perhaps that’s why we work for many recognised names: because we deliver solutions, not questions.