CBsalary.com™
CBsalary.com is a free salary calculator from CareerBuilder.com through which visitors can search and compare salaries for thousands of jobs. In addition to a salary calculator, their comprehensive salary center offers a premium salary report, cost of living calculator, and a salary advice center. When CareerBuilder.com came to Duo in late 2006, they wanted a backend system that would increase the ability to manage content and add functionality as needed.
Goals
The goals for developing this site included:
- Convert all existing functionality and content from the website’s previous system to ASP.NET and SQL Server, which would be internally managed.
- Apply co-branding across the site.
- Provide 3rd-party integration with the site’s data providers.
- Eventually, update design and user flow to streamline the website’s look and feel.
Results
Implementing ASP.NET allowed Duo to not only transfer over all existing functionality and content, but also add new areas, tools and capabilities for a more comprehensive and attractive visitor experience. These updates included:
Improved search functionality: Duo implemented search tracking, which stored data from user searches. The existing search engine was restructured so that visitors could more easily search by geographic area: this data would also narrow the related job feed pulled from CareerBuilder.com’s API. Google Analytics was employed, and to date CBsalary.com has one of the highest traffic rates of Duo’s clients.
New sections, displays: The “Education Center” was added, which acted as a container that pulled in more information from 3rd-party sources. Using Flash, Duo created new graphs for the website’s cost of living comparisons.
Integration: CareerBuilder.com was incorporated further into CBsalary.com through the “Find a Job” section. Duo implemented co-branding so that headers and footers from MSN, the Chicago Tribune and other collaborators were pulled in across the website. Existing advertising was converted into pop-unders, headers and interstitials.
The product development team at CareerBuilder.com quickly decided on a plan and a CMS. They were given minor training on the admin tool as well as Google Analytics, being mostly familiar with the latter. Duo met, and continues to meet, once a week with the product team to recap and highlight specific concerns. CBsalary.com is an ongoing project, with weekly releases of new features and content.
Microsoft ASP.NET is a web application framework that allows developers to create dynamic web applications. ASP.NET can be used to create anything from small, personal websites to large, enterprise-class web applications.
