Nobody can sell 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 salesman and what you can do to make sure it turns students into enrollments.
Why Most Websites Don’t Generate Enrollments
In the beginning, a higher ed institution buys a $10k 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. And the higher ed institution wonders why the site they bought didn’t “perform” like they hoped it would. And although the design is great, it starts to fade as time marches on. The website never became the 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 enrollment. 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 salesman.
The reason why your website doesn’t generate your enrollments is that it was never designed to get you enrollments—it was designed to just look good. Unfortunately, good-looking websites aren’t always successful. Websites that are set up like salesmen, on the other hand, those websites lead to enrollments.
Make Your Website Your Best Salesman
So we’ve figured out that if your website isn’t your best salesman, 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 your best salesman without spending another $10k on a website? We’re glad you asked.
The number one way to make your website your best salesman is to clearly call your customer to action. It’s shocking the amount of higher ed institutions that want their website to generate enrollments, but don’t tell 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 most every module). It tells your visitor to “Talk to an expert”, or “Enroll now”. It doesn’t tell them to “Learn more” or “Get started”, because those calls to action are vague. The greatest quality in a salesman is clarity. With a clear call to action, your website will start to take on the shape of a great salesman.
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. Here’s what you need to understand: your website isn’t formatted in such a way that makes answering your call to action the obvious thing to do. Why isn’t it? Because a designer is never your best salesman…
But you can restructure your website so that it makes answering your call to action the obvious thing to do. Like we realized earlier, your website needs to be clear if it’s going to be your best salesman. Clearly tell your students how you can help them become a better version of themself. Make your website more about your students’ ideal world and less about your insecurities as a higher ed institution. Use your website as a place to overcome your audience’s top objections to doing school with you.
If your website becomes a place where your audience can go to see a better version of themself, you’ll have a website that’s better than your best salesman. And when your website calls your audience to action, it’ll make perfect sense.
The Takeaway
Most websites aren’t that great of salesmen, but that doesn’t have to be the case for your site. Your audience wants to become a better version of themself, and they need your higher ed institution 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 in your industry. Your audience will go through the competition on the first page of Google and they’ll pick you. Why? Because your website is the best salesman!
