Key Medium Designs 4-Time Award-Winning Personalized Digital Experience for Career-Seekers in Philadelphia

For Immediate Release | March 11, 2020

• Key Medium improved PA CareerLink Philadelphia’s website’s design, structure, branding, and information.
• Year-over-year, Key Medium increased user acquisition by 48% and increased traffic by sessions by 25%. Organic results and search impressions had a 36% lift.
• Key Medium and our partners won four internationally-recognized awards for their work.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Key Medium has helped job-seekers and employers in the Philadelphia area by designing an award-winning website for Pennsylvania CareerLink Philadelphia, prompting dozens of local businesses to submit hiring and recruitment requests, generating vocational skills training (VST) requests from over a thousand career-seekers and awareness from over forty-thousand thousand people. From the start of the experience design strategy, the new mobile-first was created in alignment with the City’s strategic goal of upskilling individuals so that they may have decent careers with family-sustaining, livable wages. We portrayed this through a personalized human-centric experience that navigates users through to explore the catalog of help available in a self-service manner, explore careers, learn about building skills, and gain access to supports and benefits along their journey to a new career.

As a result, Key Medium won four internationally-acclaimed awards from three organizations and competitions: the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, the Association for Marketing and Communications Professionals, and International Awards Associates. Key Medium won both the 2019 Communicator Awards Distinction for features-user experience for websites and for websites – general-employment for websites. They also won the 2019 Hermes Creative Awards Gold for web-mobile information experience and the 2019 Muse Creative Awards Gold for website – employment.

Ali Jaffar, CEO and lead web developer at Key Medium notes, “When Philadelphia Works, Inc. approached me about PA CareerLink Philadelphia’s needs, there was a lack of brand cohesion, the messaging was unclear, and the user experience was poor. Additionally, there were lots of technical errors that affected SEO and rankings, stunting awareness for such a great cause. The information on the site wasn’t fresh and evergreen and the workforce system was not presented in a self-service or personalized manner, which meant that a great resource was going to waste and wasn’t being utilized properly. I’m really proud of the work we did at Key Medium to improve this website so dramatically and help tens of thousands of people in the community that are visiting the site to gain access to greater opportunities and decent jobs with family-sustaining wages.”

Key Medium explored the site’s customer personas and realized that a mobile-first strategy would be most useful to find information about job-seeking, career discovery, skills training, upcoming workshops, and more. Key Medium launched a site with gamification design, website personalization, and a clear app-like structure. The website’s content was redeveloped to ensure that content was fresh, relevant, and useful to the users. Key Medium implemented a tailored dashboard via Google’s Data Studio to ensure that the company could understand key data points and continue to improve their strategy. 

Key Medium increased website engagement and enhanced the information experience while meeting the State brand guidelines. Year-over-year, Key Medium increased user acquisition by 49% and increased traffic by sessions by 25%. Organic results and search impressions had a 36% lift.

Ali continues, “Like for all our clients helping the greater community, we were invested in improving this website’s performance to help career-seekers find jobs in the area, receive vocational skills and training, or attend workshops to help with job skills, preparing for interviews, and more. Key Medium believes in this cause, which is why we are so happy that we have been able to increase traffic and improve website performance overall.”

The new website structure is clear, showing individuals how to find the right resources, and showing employers how to meet with qualified candidates. After the site launch, over a thousand people called from their mobile devices and there were nearly a thousand direct Vocation Skills training (VST) requests in the areas of Health and Medical, Information Technology, and more.

About PACareerLink® Philadelphia

Philadelphia Works, Inc. contracts local service providers to operate the four PA CareerLink® Centers and related services. Together, PA CareerLink Philadelphia provides a network of opportunities to strengthen skills, increase access, and develop career pathways that create economic opportunities for all Philadelphians. Learn more at www.pacareerlinkphl.org.

About Key Medium and Coding for Causes

Founded in 2014, Key Medium is a premiere digital agency that creates beautiful, branded experiences for businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies. Key Medium has received praise for spearheading the growth of startup companies and lending affordable expertise and services to Philadelphia’s workforce development board, charter schools, and nonprofit organizations through the Coding for Causes program. For more about Key Medium, visit www.keymedium.com or follow on Twitter @KeyMedium.

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Ali Jaffar, CEO
Key Medium LLC
215.302.0280
press@keymedium.com
100 S. Juniper St, Floor 3, Philadelphia, PA 19107