Moving from the search-based journey to a question-based journey helped to get users into a smaller, more accurately filtered list of qualifications, but users were still experiencing difficulties with identifying the right qualification.
It is important that users do not interpret this page as the end of the journey. The qualification being on this list does not necessarily mean that it is full and relevant, as some qualifications have additional requirements that need to be met before the qualification can be considered full and relevant.
We wanted to explore how we might both:
- help users identify the correct qualification
- encourage users to continue their journey beyond this page
We found inspiration in the live Find an apprenticeship service. This iteration of the search results page included:
- an indication that the qualification has additional requirements
- the qualification level
- the awarding organisation
Later in beta, we further iterated this page with a simpler, more focussed layout, and added an arrow symbol to encourage users to continue their journey.
We know that checking some qualifications using the question-based journey will result in a search results page with 20+ qualifications. For this reason, we have kept a search box so users can refine their search results to a more manageable number.
Next steps
We will continue to test this page in user research. We will also pay particular attention to this page during the pilot phase. We have added analytics tracking to the service so we will gain qualitative data on whether users continue to the next pages in the service or end their journey here. We will also be able to monitor what keywords users type into the refine your search field.