There’s no point spending lot’s of time, effort and resources getting loads and loads of traffic to your site for there only to be a trickle or even ZERO enquiries.

Most of the time when we audit a school’s website we always find plenty of ways a school could be generating more enquiries through their site

As independent school admissions, communications and marketing folks, you’ll know doubt feel you know your website content inside and out. But do you know how it feels to navigate your website in the way a prospective family would? Nailing this and tweaking this website journey is vital to ensure you are building interest in your school by providing the right information at the right points and capturing leads. Leads which you can then convert into fee paying pupils.

Here’s where you can start:

Start with this: what is the purpose & goal of your school’s website and who is it serving?

This might seem simple, but when you actually unravel this question it usually becomes a stumbling block and you might be unclear on its purpose.

Work out who your primary audiences are (current & prospective parents) and make sure your website speaks to them by providing them with the information they need.

Don’t overcomplicate it: there’s good design and then there’s just being fancy and overcomplicated.

Every website should have the fundamentals of good UX design, but sometimes sites can be overdesigned.

No matter how amazing your website looks, withoutthe right navigation, clear content and fast loading speed…visitors will just end up frustrated and potentially looking to competitor schools to see how they shape up.

Data is King (or Queen!) : How often do you review your website’s analytics?

And do you actually know what those stats actually means? Numbers & data are all well and good but if you can’t interpret them in the right way then you can’t the necessary tweaks and changes to get your site firing on all cylinders.

So what can you do to get all your ducks in a row?

Invest in website audit

An audit is a thorough examination of your school’s website to determine if it’s functioning smoothly, has good design (remember it’s not all about looks) , provides a seamless end-user experience and is quite literally up to speed!

We know you’re busy and may not have enough time to sit and analyse your site yourself let alone interpret the data and then pull it together into an actionable report which you can share with the powers that be so why not get in touch to see how we can help do this for you.

If you do want to have a go yourself though, here are some top tips:

• Know when to capture the data you need – have you got the right data capture points along the user journey to drive those enquiries?
• Check your website speed using Google PageSpeed Insights, if it’s more than 2 seconds you might have a problem
• Set up Google Analytics and the right tracking to capture the right insight and track user behaviour
• Test your enquiry forms – are they user friendly?

Get equipped & stay on the front foot

Talk to us (and not just about your website…)

Sometimes you just need a little helping hand because you shouldn’t have to waste money, time and resources on marketing activities that don’t work. Don’t worry, we’re here for you.

We help UK and international school leaders, bursars and marketing & admissions folks to boost revenue with strategy, simple and savvy pupil recruitment and retention services.

We’ve helped generate over £4 million for school, so get in touch with us here. 

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