Online Registration - Where do the customers come from?

Have you ever wondered how your customers get to your website, and whether you are doing better or worse than your colleagues or competitors?

I took a look at a large sample of online registrations (enrollments) recently, and tracked down how they got to the many websites they enrolled on and this is what I found:

It turns out that the situation is pretty simple:

• Over half the online registration came from customers who clicked a link on another website, or in an email you sent them.
• Over a quarter of enrollments came from customers who jut typed in your web address directly.
• About one fifth came from google searches
• The rest of the search engines amount to, well, not much at all

First, if you have access to some analytics for your website, and can weed out the enrolling customers, you might want to compare your statistics. There might be some interesting take-aways.

Secondly, here are my thoughts on what this means for managing and marketing your music or dance studio:

• Links and referrals are really, really important. The SEO gurus will tell you this anyway, just from the perspective of getting your pages ranked higher in google, but these numbers show it is even more important than that. They directly drive customers.You should make sure you have links on any website you control, and as many as possible on those you do not control. Get yourself in the class locators offered by curriculum publishers for example.
• Use emails, especially around enrollment periods. Make sure you include a link to your registration page to make it really easy for your customers to enroll online. If your studio management software allows you to email all your past customers who have not re-enrolled - make use of it. Make sure your studio website is collecting prospect information for you so you can email them too.
• Have an easy to remember web address (URL). If yours is not what you want, but you already have it in place with links and marketing materials so it would be difficult to change, just take advantage of websites like godaddy.com and first find yourself a better one. Then just forward it to the site you have. A quick, effective solution for $10 per year!
• Finally, don't spend a lot on google ads. Just make sure your website is SEO friendly using some of the tips in my earlier blogs.

Remember, every online registration is a revenue source that drives the financial performance of your business.

Hope that was useful information. If you have any related questions that would be a good blog subject, just let me know.

Gerry