Nobody can “sell” to your audience quite like your website. After all, it is speaking for you 24/7. Think about it this way—in the digital world, your website is who your students meet first. So whether or not your website can generate enrollments is the basis for whether or not you’ll achieve success online. In this blog, we’re going to show you why your website is your best recruiter and what you can do to make sure it turns more students into enrollments.
Why Most Websites Don’t Generate Enrollments
Let’s say that in the beginning, your higher education institution buys a $30,000 website from a marketing agency. After some design and copy revisions, the site looks good and reads great… but it doesn’t lead to many enrollments. You start wondering why the site you bought didn’t “perform” like you hoped it would. And, although the design is great, it starts to fade as time marches on. The website never became the enrollment-generating asset you needed it to be. Now it’s the webpage you hope a serious student doesn’t see when they seek to enroll with you.
Why is this the narrative for so many higher ed institutions? Because most websites aren’t built to generate enrollments. If you rewind back to the conversation you had when you bought your website, you’ll realize that something was missing: They impressed you with design and copy, but they never showed you how your website was going to be your best recruiter.
The reason why your website doesn’t generate enrollments is that it was never designed to really do so—it was just designed to look good. Unfortunately, good-looking websites aren’t always successful. Websites that are set up like an admissions recruiter, on the other hand, lead to more enrollments.
Make Your Website (and Program Pages) Your Best Student Recruiter
So, you’ve figured out that if your website isn’t your best recruiter, it’s because your website isn’t set up for enrollments, it’s just set up to look good. If your website looks good but doesn’t generate your enrollments, it’s a dud. A cute dud, but a dud nevertheless. How can you turn your website into a student recruitment machine without spending another $30k on a website?
We’re glad you asked.
The #1 way to make your website your best recruiter is to clearly call your target audience to action. It’s shocking the amount of higher educaion institutions that want their website to generate enrollments, but don’t provide clear information that tells their students what to do when they’re on the website. If you aren’t calling your students to action, and your website isn’t generating enrollments, you know why!
A good call to action is always near on a good website (either with sticky navigation or found in almost every section as you move down the page). It tells your visitor to “Speak with an Admissions Counselor”, or “Enroll Now”. It doesn’t tell them to “Learn more” or “Get started” because those calls to action are vague. The greatest qualities in a recruiter are engagement and clarity. With a clear call to action, your website will start to engage more of your ideal students and encourage them to enroll.
How to Make Your Call to Action Work
Surely, a clear call to action isn’t going to take your website from zero to hero. You’re right, it will help, but it won’t get you out of the hole all the way. So this is what you need to do to turn your website into an enrollment-making machine. You need to check if your website is formatted in such a way that makes answering your call to action the obvious thing to do.
If it isn’t, you need restructure your website so that it makes answering your call to action the obvious thing to do.
- Clearly tell your students how you can help them achieve their goals.
- Make your website more about your students’ success and less about your accomplishments as a higher education institution.
- Use your website as a place to overcome your audience’s top objections to applying and enrolling with you.
If your website becomes a place where your audience can go to see a successful version of themselves, you’ll have a website that’s better than your best recruiter. And when your website calls your target audience to action, it’ll be a no-brainer.
The Takeaway
Many websites aren’t that great at “selling”, but that doesn’t have to be the case for your site. Your prospective students want their problems solved, and they need you to do it. So show them how you can help and call them to action! Trust us, when you do, your website will stand out against the competition.
