2 Website Tips that Help Engage Prospective Parents

A great looking website is impressive and showcases you as an organization that is on the ball.

A great website experience, on the other hand, can turn visitors into leads and leads into enrolments.

Let’s look at 2 simple strategies that you can consider working into your current website – or implement in your next website re-build.

1. Give the parents what they want

I’m a huge advocate for not only giving people what they want online – but making it really easy for them to access what they want.  

We all know that a school is only really as good as the teachers within it. And we also know that parents are eager to meet the very people who will be entrusted with looking after their pride and joy.

So, the question is – why do most schools overlook a golden opportunity to give prospective parents a chance to meet the teachers in your school – in a really friendly and warm way?

On our websites, we always include a “meet the teachers” page.

We include a nice photo of the teacher and a short write up beside it – where the teacher talks about why they love working at the school and also what they love doing outside of school.

We are attempting to add a personal touch here – because we know the personal touch is really going to be the thing that sells most people.

This is on the homepage:

This is a snippet from the meet the teachers page:

2. Tell them what they need to do

Call to action is vital to the online experience.

One of the big rules in sales and marketing is that confusion leads in inaction.

Think about a time when you started looking for a product or service (either online or offline) and whatever you were reading on the website (or hearing from the salesperson’s mouth) was way over your head and you didn’t understand.

I’ll put my last dollar on it that you didn’t buy right then and there – and chances are you didn’t buy off that business at all.

The business that usually wins is the one that can communicate the message as clearly as possible – so the buyer can be absolutely certain with their buying choice.

We don’t buy until we are certain – so we must ensure we are thinking about how we can make our prospective parents absolutely certain at every step in their ‘school shopping’ journey.

The best way to do this is to tell them what they need to do. We tell them that the best place to start is with our “Online Video Tour”

This is the first thing they see when they land on some of our websites. Notice how we tell them what to do?

This is the second row of the homepage (below the main image)

Clear call to action makes a huge difference to the performance of your online strategy.

You will find that once you start telling people what they need to do to progress in their decision journey – you will be doing them a great service by making this decision easier.

In doing so, you will also have the best chance of booking more enrolments. 

Conclusion

The best way though to maximize your results is to take your school leader hat off and put a parent hat on.

Start analyzing what you like and what you don’t like about buying experiences you have.

Take note of the things that really got you interested in a product or service when you heard about it or saw it for the first time online. 

Observe the marketing strategy (even screenshot or bookmark them) – and before too long you will really start noticing some patterns.

When you notice the pattern – you will work out that the principles of great marketing are similar.

It’s just the effectiveness of the execution that is different.   

by Richard Mills – Founder/CEO (Digital Schools)