School websites, enquiries and enrolment systems
There is a window every year, six weeks wide, in which the whole of next year is decided. Everyone who is going to enquire enquires in it. Everyone who is going to visit visits in it. And every one of those enquiries arrives while the people who could answer it are teaching.
An enquiry answered on the evening it arrives is a visit. The same enquiry answered on Thursday is a polite reply to somebody who has already been somewhere else and liked it.
Nothing about that is a marketing problem. It is a six-week staffing problem that no school can staff for.
Two people are reading, and they want opposite things.
The person paying wants to know results, safeguarding, staff turnover, what happens to a child who is struggling, and what the total cost is once the trips and the uniform are counted.
The person attending wants to know what a Tuesday feels like, whether they will know anyone, and whether the thing they are actually interested in is taken seriously here.
Most sites in this sector answer the first reader and hope the second one is in the room. A site that answers both, separately and without making either wade through the other’s questions, is doing something almost nobody does.
The answer is on the site. That is not the same as findable.
Term dates, the absence form, the fees schedule, the bus route, the policy somebody needs at nine o’clock at night. All of it is published, most of it as a PDF from three years ago, and the office answers the same six questions by phone every week because finding it takes longer than asking.
Every one of those calls is a person who was willing to help themselves and could not. Making the answer findable does not just improve the site — it takes the six questions off the office.
And when a date changes, it changes in one place, and it is right everywhere it appears. Nobody edits code, and nobody discovers in September that the old date is still live on a page nobody remembered.
What actually changes, in the order it matters to you.
- A customer's history is remembered forever, so nobody re-explains anything.
- Every customer hears from you at the right moment, and nobody sends one by hand.
- The follow-up that always gets forgotten, never gets forgotten.
- Someone who left without buying gets a reason to come back.
- Your prices and photos change when you say so, without waiting on anyone.
- Everything about every customer sits in one place, and it's yours.
- Pages get written for the things people are actually searching for.
- Reports arrive on a Monday without you asking.
- There's one number that tells you whether it's working.
- Only you can open your files. Anyone else asking is refused by the lock itself, not by a rule we wrote.
The audit will tell you what a parent finds when they search for schools in your area at nine o’clock at night, and how long your site takes to answer them.
Questions people ask
- Our enquiries all land in the same few weeks, while everyone is teaching. What can actually be done about that?
- Treat it as a staffing problem, not a marketing one — that is what it is. Every enquiry in that window arrives while the people who could answer it are teaching, so the work goes into the part that does not need somebody free at that moment: every enquirer hears from you at the right moment, and nobody sends one by hand.
- Does it really matter how soon we reply to an enquiry?
- It is the whole difference. An enquiry answered on the evening it arrives is a visit. The same enquiry answered on Thursday is a polite reply to somebody who has already been somewhere else and liked it.
- Parents and prospective students want completely different things. Can one site serve both?
- Yes, if it answers them separately. The person paying wants results, safeguarding, staff turnover and what the total cost comes to once the trips and the uniform are counted; the person attending wants to know what a Tuesday feels like and whether the thing they care about is taken seriously here. A site that answers both without making either wade through the other’s questions is doing something almost nobody does.
- Everything is already published on our site. Why does the office still answer the same questions by phone?
- Because published is not the same as findable. Most of it sits as a PDF from three years ago, and the office answers the same six questions by phone every week because finding it takes longer than asking. Making the answer findable takes those six questions off the office.
- Who changes a term date, and what stops the old one staying live somewhere?
- You change it, once. When a date changes it changes in one place and it is right everywhere it appears — nobody edits code, and nobody discovers in September that the old date is still live on a page nobody remembered.
- What does the audit actually tell us?
- It tells you what a parent finds when they search for schools in your area at nine o’clock at night, and how long your site takes to answer them.
Want to talk through how this would fit your business? Message on WhatsApp, or send a message and it reaches the person who would do the work.