The Complete Guide to Creating a High Converting Website for your Language School
If you want your language school to succeed, a good website is a must-have. Modern design and a neat and clear plan are important for making that positive first impression. You wouldn’t invite your students to a messy and cluttered space for classes. And you should approach your online space with the same care.
Here we explain how to create an effective website for a language school that brings in new students!
Shortcuts:
3 Rules To Remember When Creating a High Converting Website for Your Language School
Why You Should Invest in a High Converting Website Rather Than Social Media for Your Language School
Blogging and SEO for Language School’s Website – Is It Worth It?
Conclusion: Why Is a High Converting Website Important for Your Language School?
Get access to our library of free marketing guides, trackers, and templates for expat language schools:
Introduction: What is a High Converting Website?
When you design your online space, you should focus on creating a high converting website, meaning there should be a high rate of people actually signing up or leaving their email address after their visit:
Conversion rate optimization starts from reducing unnecessary distractions, such as too many pages and types of content.
Focus on creating a simple and clear layout including only a few key pages and make sure it’s easy to navigate.
Include call-to-action buttons (buttons such as ‘Sign up’ or ‘Enroll’) to increase the chance of someone leaving an email address or deciding on a class before they move away from the website or get distracted.
Finally, filling each page with well-thought-out elements, text, and pictures is vital in maximizing the website conversion.
The 5 Key Pages on Your Language School Website
You only need a few pages for a good language school’s website. Anything else is overkill and may serve as a distraction and confuse people.
Here are the 5 key pages you need to have:
1. Home page
Since it’s the starting point, it should include visible links to all the other pages for easy navigation. As for content, choose a few elements that highlight your school’s advantages and encourage the visitor to learn more:
You can start with an interesting graphic and a promotional phrase.
Next elements may include short highlights about your crew, offer, location, etc. with links to related pages to learn more.
At the bottom, you can add testimonials from your previous students, links to social media, and your contact info.
Make sure your home page isn’t visually cluttered!
2. About us
Present what your school is all about. Who are the teachers? Talk about their experience, expertise, their approach to teaching, but also who they are as a person.
You should adjust the description to your client avatar and mention things that your ideal student is looking for in a teacher. This is not always just knowledge but also finding someone of similar interests or someone who creates a friendly atmosphere.
3. Offer
Present your offer in a simple form with a short description of each option. To avoid overwhelming your viewer with too many choices, it’s better to give them no more than 3 options at a time.
For example, the first page can contain only options for types of classes (group, individual, online classes), then when a viewer clicks on one option - on the second page they can choose between levels (beginner, intermediate, etc.), then after that a final page with timetable and dates.
4. Contact
Include your contact info, show your location, add buttons to a contact form, sign up form, and social media if you use them to answer messages regularly.
5. Sign-up button
This is important to increase your conversion rate. It acts as a call to action for the visitor. Here you should link a proper sales page – one without the top menu, encouraging people to immediately make a decision. You can read more about creating landing pages for language schools in this article.
If you don’t have time or funds to set up a proper sales page - make the signing up process as easy and quick as possible by adding a sign-up form.
For every article, we create a marketing to-do list with actionable steps for you to follow in the upcoming two weeks. Created specifically for language schools!
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3 Rules To Remember When Creating a High Converting Website for Your Language School
1. The first step before you optimize your website for conversions is to make sure the overall look of the website is modern, and the style fits your client avatar. A good first impression is very important.
2. Make sure your website collects emails or any other contact data.
The best idea is to use a sign-up form for a newsletter or to enroll in courses. This is important because even if someone doesn’t decide on enrolling during their first visit on your website, they leave a trace, and you can contact them to persuade them later.
Email marketing has the highest ROI (Return Over Investment) among all the other marketing activities (like blogging and social media). It is cheaper and easier to use.
You can use it to present your offer directly to people who are interested in your school. Without it, people will just move on so, remember: “out of sight, out of mind”! So, if you build an email list and learn how to use it properly, you can start enjoying its power to bring in new students and attract the old ones back to your school!
Read more about email marketing for language schools in this article.
3. Don't overcomplicate the contact form - name, email, and message is more than enough!
Imagine trying to contact two hairdressers to ask about their offer:
one is asking for your name and email address,
and the other one also wants to know your phone number, nationality, address, shoe size…
Which one will you contact because it's easier and less intrusive?
People, who just come to your website and know nothing about you, are not willing to spend their own time trying to learn more about your offer or share their private info with a complete stranger. So, the shorter the better.
Why You Should Invest in a High Converting Website Rather Than Social Media for Your Language School
It's far more important, for most language schools, to invest in their website rather than in social media, due to the fact that for language schools, students mainly come from Google searches or from recommendations.
Most people will not find your school via social media because that’s not a place where people look for such services. And a big percentage of your current students probably won't even follow you there.
You should use your social media rather as an additional tool to increase the chances of someone choosing you over your competition. Plus - eventually, you’ll need to redirect them elsewhere to sign up – it’s best you prepare a landing page for that, instead of linking to your homepage.
Read more about marketing and sales funnels for language schools in this article.
Nevertheless, for most people, your website is the first thing they will look up and check for detailed information when they get interested in language courses. This is why you should make sure your website is optimized to have a high conversion rate.
Get access to our library of free marketing guides, trackers, and templates for expat language schools:
Blogging and SEO for Language School’s Website – is it worth it?
Since Google will be one of your main sources of students, you should try to optimize it for search engines (SEO) whenever possible, and make sure the site is easy to find. However, NEVER optimize your website for SEO first - optimize your website for your clients, not for robots!
Ultimately it is more important to appeal to people to encourage them to leave their contact info or sign up for courses. Website visits without enrollment won’t pay your bills!
Read more about SEO for language schools in this article.
You’ve probably heard that you should have a company blog in order to appear in search engines more often. Yes, blogging is good for SEO. But it is difficult to write highly searchable articles about language learning in a specific city. Blogging is expensive and/or time-consuming, and most of the schools that we talk to that have a blog, are not seeing much traffic coming through this source.
You need to catch a very special set of keywords to bring your specific target audience onto your page. It’s not impossible, but it is difficult and not worth the money unless you have money to spare.
Otherwise, put your effort into more efficient marketing tools, like email marketing, and make sure your website looks presentable and it’s easy to navigate and sign up.
Read more about blogging for language schools in this article.
Conclusion: Why Is a High Converting Website Important for Your Language School?
Most people will find your school via Google or hear about it from a friend. Then they will look at your website to see what you’re about. This is your chance to make a good first impression!
It is crucial that your website is well designed, has all the important information, and that it guides its visitor towards a specific action. This can be either to leave contact info or to sign up for a course. To make that happen you need to prepare an easy contact and sign-up form that’s also quick to find.
Adjust the style and information you present to your client avatar and make it easy for them to understand your offer and make choices. Limit elements that can distract or confuse them. This will increase your conversion rates – meaning more students enrolled in your courses!
Good luck and in case you need any help with optimizing your website – feel free to reach out!
For every article, we create a marketing to-do list with actionable steps for you to follow in the upcoming two weeks. Created specifically for language schools!
You can access the to-do list library by leaving your email address below:
