Understand user behavior by region to increase the leads captured in your conversion funnel
At educations.com, we care about helping you maximize the conversions you get from your educations.com’s profile. By understanding your users’ behavior, you can optimize your conversion settings to increase the number of prospective students that you can capture in your overall marketing funnel.
Our experience in helping our users - prospective students - find their ideal study abroad program leads us to understand how regional differences play a key role in determining user behavior. That’s why we’ve analyzed user behavior by geographic region for two key conversion metrics - click-through rates and information requests.
You can use this analysis to help you decide how to incorporate the conversions you get from educations.com into your overall marketing strategy.
User Behavior by Region: Click-throughs
The “User Behavior by Region: Click-throughs” chart shows the conversion rate of click-throughs to university websites by sub-continent (as defined by Google Analytics). We hope to highlight which geographic regions prefer to immediately consult the university website rather than sending an inquiry.
Please note that the majority of profiles on educations.com have a click-through and information request option. However, many profiles have only a brochure download CTA. The conversion rate below is taken from overall views of program and institute profile pages so results will appear lower than average client conversion rates.
Updated December 2020
User Behavior by Region: Information Requests
What about students who send an enquiry directly to institutes when visiting a program page? The “User Behavior by Region: Information Requests” chart below shows the conversion rate of student inquiries sent to universities by sub-continent (as defined by Google Analytics).
Students from these geographic regions prefer to send an inquiry rather than immediately consulting the university website. Please note that requesting information is gradually declining as a student practice, with more students from regions around the world opting to find information and answers independently.
Updated December 2020
How to Shape Your Conversion Strategy
Here’s a short theoretical case study to help you use the user behavior data to shape your conversion strategy.
Step 1. Determine the region(s) of your target prospective students
Let’s say that your target prospective students come from three regions, that is, Northern America, Eastern Asia and Southern Europe.
Step 2. Look up the click-through rate and information request rate of your target prospects by region
The click-through rate for Northern American users is 8%, which is higher than the median click-through rate of 7.2%. Meanwhile, Northern American users’ information requests rate is 1.2%, which is lower than the median 2.1% information requests rate.
Southern European users’ click-through rate is amongst the highest at 10.6% while their information requests rate is lower than the median rate at 1.4%.
Eastern Asian users’ click-through rate is amongst the lowest at 5.2% while their information requests rate is the lowest at 0.5%.
Step 3. Respond to information requests timely and in personalized manner
Even if information request rates for your target prospects are relatively low, you should still respond promptly to each information request you receive.
Often students know early on in their journey that they have a question to pose to the university and have likely not yet consulted your website. An advantage to inquiries is the ability to capture an email address to add to your CRM without risking a drop off when entering your website, so make the most of their early engagement.
Our student survey shows that you can beat student expectations by staying on top of information requests and responding first. Additionally, students prefer a more personalized response to a generic response. Finally, be sure to follow up to make sure students receive your response - this will also show potential students that you take their request and time seriously. Read our report for 3 simple tips to improve your response & enrollment rate.
Step 4. Take action to turn a click-through into a lead on your website
The click-through rates for your target prospects are of significant importance. Southern European and Northern American students have click-through rates that are higher than the median.
While Eastern Asian students’ click-through rate is lower than the median, they have the lowest information request rate. This shows that you have to work even harder to secure the number of leads you can get from Eastern Asian students’ click-throughs.
Given the importance of click-throughs to generating leads for your target regions, it is essential to have a conversion funnel plan for your click-throughs.
You can start by analyzing your university page that the user is clicking through to. Are the users clicking through to a relevant program page? Is there a clear call-to-action (CTA) on your page?
You can also set up a retargeting campaign to remind your website click-through visitors of your university and programs if they leave your website without converting. It would be useful to consider localizing or using local languages for your retargeting ads.
If you would like help setting up your retargeting ad campaigns - we can open up our audience of students to you. Contact us here to learn more!
Step 5. Track the value of referral traffic to your website to optimize your marketing spend
If you’re working with educations.com, you may be working with other channel partners to help meet your enrollment goals. If you’re not tracking conversions on your program landing pages, we recommend setting up goals for actions that bring students a step closer to enrollment.
Whether it’s a sign-up for your newsletters, an enquiry for more information, a brochure download, setting up a meeting with an admissions counselor or another action, if there is a form or button on your website, you can track it! Once goals are in place you can begin comparing different channel partners against one another.
To understand the value of your campaign with us, it’s important to take an in-depth look at the exposure educations.com is giving your institute. Download this guide to learn more about how to track value from educations.com.
