Is Your Website Selling Your School?
*Note: For this post, I am focusing on career schools and colleges and prospective students of these schools
The main goal of a website is to sell a product or a service. Yes, it is also to expand the online presence of the brand (or in this case the school) and educate the user, but these are only pieces to the puzzle.
Since career schools and colleges have various start dates throughout the year, they focus on generating leads and increasing enrollments. The school’s online presence, such as the website (and social media sites/email campaigns), must work to compliment the offline efforts in order to be successful.
What Do You Want People to Do?
When a prospect visits the school’s website, getting them to take action is the focus. Whether it is by requesting more information, registering for an upcoming open house, scheduling a campus tour, opting in to receive emails, or connecting to the school’s social media sites, these call to actions need to be big and bold. It must be easy for the prospect to take action. Also, make sure the call to action is throughout the website – not just on the homepage. Higher Education websites must not forget to create a sense of urgency. The next class start should always be advertised. This gets people to react fast, as if they are going to miss out on something.
Paint a Picture
Pictures of buildings on campus or students posing for shots are great, but real visuals need to be incorporated into the mix. The website should include images of students participating in class, engaging in different activities around campus, studying in the library or student lounges, and other real-life scenarios. The goal is to have the prospect connect with the campus by allowing them to mentally picture themselves there.
A Few Other Quick Tips
Websites need to be consistent with every aspect of the school’s branding. The same colors, logos, taglines, and anything else that relates must carry over. The messaging must be the same, otherwise you may be missing out on making important connections with prospects.
Make sure users can easily navigate through the website. It is essential that the structure makes sense so users do not become aggregated and leave. Every page MUST link back to the main page, otherwise forget it! These prospects will drop your school and search for another one instantly.
Does your website have a site search? If not, it needs to. If your site has one, make sure you think from an external view – What will the user type in when searching for open house dates? For example, a prospect probably won’t type in “Prospective Students” when searching for open house dates. To ensure that the user gets to their destination, take a look at your page titles. For open house dates, the page title should be, “COLLEGE NAME Open House Dates – Prospective Students.”
Websites act as one of the most dominant means of communication between the school and prospects. If you are not taking the above tips into consideration then your enrollments are not as high as they could potentially be. Your website is the face of the school. If it fails to make the connection between the school and the student, then it isn’t serving its purpose. A failed connection will not sell the school.
