A new online planning and buying directory has revealed a lack of transparency when it comes to costs by some job sites and highlights that many lack any e-commerce facilities.

JobSiteAdvisor has been launched by recruitment media stalwarts Keith Robinson and Simon Goddard, the team behind CareerSiteAdvisor, and currently features 600 indexed job boards with 1,000 scheduled to be listed by the end of the year.

Robinson, who spends at least 30 minutes exploring every site that is indexed, told Recruiter that around 60 of the sites indexed feature no prices at all and 40% require the client to email them or register before they provide a price.

“What about Web 2.0? A key plank is transparency, ease-of-use and e-commerce,” said Robinson. “The big boards and those from a print background tend to be transparent and will have a good media pack, but what I call the ‘Web generation’ sites tend to be much less open.”

Robinson believes the reason for this is that such sites want details of a potential client before releasing any pricing information so that they have an opportunity “to sell” to them. But he said this could be to their detriment and is not what potential customers expect in the era of e-commerce and Web 2.0. “The danger is that if people can’t find that information, they will go.