Conversion architecture website design for schools
Conversion architecture website design for schools is a planned approach to layout, navigation, calls to action and tools like live chat that guides families from their first visit to an inquiry, a tour or an application. It’s for charter, private, public and trade schools whose websites get visitors but not enough inquiries.
- Clean layout and intuitive navigation
- Incentives and clear calls to action
- Live chat and click-to-call
How to increase website inquiries for your school
Unless your website is just an online business card (what we call “brochureware”), you want visitors to do something: call, send an email, submit an inquiry form, book a tour or start an application.
Many schools assume that an attractive site with good traffic will succeed on its own. It won’t. In fact, most website traffic is wasted.
There are three ways to get better results from your website: bring in more visitors, encourage visitors to take a bigger next step, and convert a higher share of the visitors you already have. SEO services for schools and paid advertising for schools handle the first. Conversion architecture handles the rest, and it makes every visitor you attract worth more.
Four misconceptions that waste school website traffic
Most wasted traffic comes from assuming one of these is true.
“Visitors are anxious to interact with you simply because they found your website.”
“Yours is the only site they visit during their session.”
“Visitors will find what they want.”
“Visitors know what they want.”
Whatever brought them to your site, visitors need guidance and motivation to act. Leading them down a planned path to a call to action is called a “sales funnel” (for a school, an enrollment funnel), and building one takes planning and an understanding of how people behave online.
Once a family does reach out, inbound marketing for schools keeps the conversation going, as this marketing automation example for schools shows.
Why your school website conversion rate matters more than traffic
Raising your conversion rate by just a few points can have a bigger impact than growing your traffic.
In the example shown, a 2% increase in conversion rate has the same impact as an extra 24,000 visitors. That’s the payoff of just doing things right in the first place.
Effective conversion techniques depend on the demographics and psychographics of the families you want to reach. They combine:
Clean layout and intuitive navigation,
Incentives that give visitors a reason to act,
Calls to action at the right points along the way.
Sometimes adding a tool such as live chat or click-to-call can raise conversions significantly. Design choices matter too: how a page is laid out and how far families have to scroll both shape what they do next. Read more about the psychology of website design for schools.
Turn website visitors into enrolled families
We’ve been helping schools turn website visitors into enrolled families since 2011. Get in touch and we’ll build a conversion strategy for your website.
Conversion architecture is built into our school website design services, and we can apply it to your current site too. For a picture of what a complete enrollment strategy can do, read the Richard McKenna Online High School case study (PDF): enrollment grew 56% in 12 months. Not sure where your site stands? Start with a free website and SEO audit for schools.
The best part for our business is being able to see the return on investment in a very tangible way that we could not see when we were doing paper advertising or billboards. Our website and marketing approach has been modernized and more relevant than before…
Conversion-focused school website design FAQ
Something else on your mind? Call us at (949) 276-6063.
What is conversion architecture in website design?
Conversion architecture is the planning behind a website that leads visitors down a set path to the action you want them to take. For a school, that action is usually a call, an inquiry, a tour booking or an application. It combines clean layout and intuitive navigation, incentives that give visitors a reason to act, and calls to action at the right points along the way.
How can a school increase website inquiries?
Start by guiding families instead of hoping they find their way. Make programs, enrollment information and contact options easy to reach, give visitors a clear reason to act, and place calls to action where families are ready for the next step. Tools such as live chat or click-to-call can also make it easier for parents to reach you.
What is a good conversion rate for a school website?
There’s no single number that fits every school, because audiences, programs and what counts as a conversion all differ. What matters is improving your own rate. Even a small gain can outweigh a big jump in traffic: in the example on this page, a 2% increase in conversion rate has the same impact as an extra 24,000 visitors.
Is it better to improve conversion rate or get more website traffic?
You need both. Raising your conversion rate by a few points can have a bigger impact than growing your traffic, and it makes every visitor you earn through SEO or paid advertising worth more. The best results come from sending the right families to pages built to convert them.
How do we find out what’s stopping our website from converting?
Start with a free WebScan™ website audit, which shows how your current site performs and what to fix first. You can also book a free consultation, and we’ll talk through your enrollment goals and build a conversion strategy for your website, whether you’re improving the site you have or planning a new one.
