Work in Japan

Japan's first job seeking service which connects Japanese companies with foreign workers

Client

Work in Japan

Timeline

Feb 2020

My Role

UX Design

Tools

Sketch, Marvel

Project Overview

Due to NDA's, names have been changed

Work in Japan is the first company in Japan that connects Japanese companies to foreigners looking for work. Hiring practices in Japan present many unique challenges to foreigners, particularly in regards to filling out applications in Japanese or sending emails back and forth trying to schedule interviews. Work in Japan smooths out this process by allowing foreigners looking for work to read job listings, apply, and manage interviews all through an app. For Japanese employers, they can post a job listing which will be translated in various languages and can track applicants through a web application.
The service has been a great success so far, particularly with foreigners. However, Japanese businesses are not signing up at a rate which was satisfactory to the company owners.
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My task was to identify the problem and implement UX solutions to increase business signups.

Project Index

Research

This is a product that's already out there and needs to be redesigned. I look at some competitor's to see how they approach the sign up task flow. I identified issues on the flow concerning the site layout as well as the sign up form.

Most websites have a separate log in and sign up button in the top right, the current Work in Japan site only has a log in button.
The task flow for "sign up and post a job" includes
Competitors have a simple sign up form which very few fields, typically 3
Work in Japan's sign up form has 23 fields with 21 being mandatory
The drop-off rate on the sign up page is 44.6% for Feb 2019 - Feb 2020. Most of the through traffic (55.4%) is going to the employer dashboard login.

Registration flow

Registration task flow

The current registration task flow is as follows. After clicking on 今すぐ掲載 (post a job now)、the user is taken back to the 求人掲載 (job posting) information page. I believe this causes confusion for the visitors to the site.

User testing

How discoverable is this sign up form?

I asked 3 users (Japanese) to find this registration page in 3 clicks or less starting from the top page. After searching for 5 and 7 minutes respectively, they all gave up.

Accessibility

I love seafoam green. It's my favorite color. However it does not meet AA accessibility standards. 1 out of 12 men are colorblind, and the ability to see contrast decreases with age. The current selected navigation menu item and CTA may be difficult for them to see, decreasing usability and leading to less conversions.

I changed it to the blue color already in use on the site which meets AA requirements for large and bold text. Blue also conveys feelings of trust, and is good for a business color.

Sign up form

The sign up form in use was rather long, 23 fields with 21 being mandatory. As stated earlier, the drop-off rate on the sign up page is 44.6% for Feb 2019 - Feb 2020. Most of the through traffic (55.4%) is going to the employer dashboard login. I believe the long sign up form which does not allow the ability to save as a draft is the reason. My plan was to reduce the number of fields to 3 in order to increase business sign ups.

Old

New

For invoicing purposes the company still needs to collect this information from new users. After talking over a few options, I decided to collect the information from the user when they log into the employer dashboard for the first time. Instead of collecting all the information on a single long page, I broke it down into manageable steps in a wizard format. I also made other UX improvements such as changing dropdown boxes with only 2 options into radio buttons.

Good form UX

The form on the site did not have any example inputs or inline password validation. The error states were also non-specific and did not tell the user what they did wrong or give them clear steps on how to fix it. I changed this in the new form design for better UX.

Results

One month after implementation, the exit rate on the sign up page was reduced from 46% to 23%
It is now possible to sign up in 2 clicks

Although the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic may affect metrics in the short term, I will continue to monitor the results and will update this page when possible.

Reflections

Although Japanese is not my native language I can do UI work in Japanese and deliver results. This project involved working remotely with stakeholders in Tokyo as well as a development team in Bangalore. I was able to communicate effectively across different time zones.