5 Quick Website Tips for Increasing Student Enrollments

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Having looked at many institution websites with an eye for marketing effectiveness, I have come across a few things that most sites could add relatively quickly that could significantly improve their marketing and student enrollment efforts. If you haven't implemented these techniques yet, I could almost guarantee that doing so will increase enrollments.

1. Collect Leads on All Pages - Have a way to collect student inquiries and/or leads on every page of your external website. Students find you in a variety of ways, and they aren't always through the front page, or even the 10th page. You need to design this into a template that appears throughout your website.




2. Keep Lead Form Short - Keep your lead form as short as possible (name and email, or just email). See the image to the right for an example. Every field that you add to your lead form increases the likelihood that you are missing out on valuable student leads. Even two or three extra fields can cut your inquiries in half! The best practice is to take just an email. It may sound like too little information, but the theory is that there is a huge leap between not having any way to contact someone and having their email. Once you have their email, possibly as a newsletter subscription, you can build a relationship with them and collect more information down the road. This is a cornerstone of a permission marketing strategy, which I will blog about more soon. There is a caveat though. Our colleagues at the more successful institutions have gotten to the point where their marketing efforts are so effective that they bring in too many leads, which allows them to be more selective. They use the extra fields to qualify students. If you reach that point, then you probably already have all of these tips covered anyway! Good for you!




3. Lead Collection Icon/Text Should be Highly Visible - You may use an image or just some text with a link as the lead generator on every page of your website (referring back to tip #1). If you are really good, you use the email collection box method I show in the image above. This needs to be one of most visible items on each page, second only to logo and Institution and/or program name. I know, it is valuable real estate and you have 15 different departments vying for space on the webpage, but in the studies that I've conducted on lead collection icon/text visibility for my clients, the impact of a highly visible lead generator can be a 400% increase or more. Sorry other departments, with that kind of increase, you are going to have to take a little less visible spot for the good of the institution. I know, easier said than done, but this is a good goal for even the smallest of marketing budgets.




4. Provide a Phone Number - Different folks, different strokes is a common theme in marketing. I tend to respond by email or contact form myself, but there is a large number of potential students, especially in the adult student market that prefer to make a phone call. Hey, I can't blame them, and it is that go-get-it attitude that will make them a successful student as well! But what this means for you is that you should always have a phone number in your highly visible lead collection spot on your page. This assumes that you have made the commitment to have the infrastructure in place to answer these phone calls. If you take phone calls during limited hours, such as the work week, make sure hours are listed and a well-informed someone is always available to answer phone calls.




5. Differentiate - I've found this to be a good tip for life in general, but begin with telling your website visitor, the potential student, what makes you different, not the same, from everyone else. Of course, this assumes that it is a positive attribute!

It is no accident that the four top things have to do with making that first contact, as this is critical to a successful enrollment campaign. But I can't say this enough, please, please, please make sure you have the infrastructure in place to handle the increase in inquiries and enrollments. This is the first impression someone is going to get of your fine institution and we want to make sure it is a wonderful experience. Even if you have to hire out to offset peak times in activity, it is well worth the cost in the return you will get in additional conversions to actual students.