International Student Recruitment News & Insights | educations.com

How to Take Your educations.com Profile From Good to Great

Written by Keely Witherow | Nov 6, 2020 1:45:33 PM

Increase conversions, drive traffic to your profile, and help learners get the information they need about the education you provide.

 

At educations.com, making your profile on our site a success is one of our greatest ambitions. A profile optimized with relevant and updated content can go a long way towards helping our users find their ideal study abroad program. A profile with enriched content adds visual data that offers unique selling points and increases trust. That’s why we analyzed the profile content across our site to determine what elevates a profile from good to great! 

We analyzed 996 URLs with the highest number of page views for their conversion rates across a number of goals including click-throughs, information requests, and brochure downloads or bookings using the EViews statistical software. We then ranked the conversion rates into 6 groups, of which:

 

  • 20%+ is an ideal conversion rate

  • 10-15% is a medium conversion rate

  • 2.5-7.5% is a low conversion rate

 

Graph showing the number of URLs in each conversion rate group

 

 

What Can You Add to Achieve a “Medium” Conversion Rate?

All profiles include a basic institute description, but what can you add to your profile to make it perform even better? Profiles with a medium level conversion rate, which we define as a conversion rate between 10% - 15%, have the following in common:

 


Contact information

Tell potential students where to contact you and find you by including your address.


Scholarship availability

Does your school offer scholarships? Let our users know you offer financial assistance by including scholarship information.


 

What Can You Add to Achieve an “Ideal” Conversion Rate?

Join the ranks of profiles with the highest conversion rates of 20% or higher by including these sections:

 

A “why study at” section

Our most optimized profiles feature a content section where you can tell students why they should study at your school. 

 

 

Video presentations

Video presentations reinforce trust and give you an opportunity to show off the quality of your school and its programs. These can be quick intro videos about your school, overviews of your programs, or student testimonials. 


 

If you’d like to add more content sections to your profile, please fill out our content enrichment form and send it to your account manager.

 

General Recommendations for Course-Specific Content

Beyond our conversion rate groupings, we were able to pinpoint some trends that lead to a higher conversion rate and trends that can lower your conversion rate. These general recommendations apply to your course pages rather than your institute profile. Here are our hard and soft recommendations for your educations.com course pages.

Hard Recommendations

What positively affects conversion rates on course pages?

In descending order, these content features are proven to have a positive impact on conversion rate:

 

Career opportunities

What kind of career opportunities open up to students when they complete your degree program or course? This can help them make their decision to choose your school.


Application dates

When can students apply to your program or courses? Application deadlines help students plan and prepare to become students at your school.


Funds and scholarship information

Higher education can be pricey, and international students often pay higher fees than local students. Are there any scholarships to help them finance their education at your institution?


Qualification

What degree, certificate, or other qualification will students walk away from your school with? This might not be clear in the program description, but is always an important factor for prospective students.

 

What negatively affects conversion rates on course pages?

While adding content and relevant, updated information can only help your profile, we identified two factors that can negatively impact your conversion rate:

 

Word count

Including too much information or too little information about your courses has an impact.

We calculated the ideal word count range based on our analysis and it shows that too few or too many words can negatively impact your conversion rate. Your primary institute or course description should comprise between 224 and 682 words, with a sweet spot just under 500 words. Secondary institute descriptions (why study at your institute, scholarship information, campus information, etc.) should be shorter, between 100-300 words.

 

Low quality image or absence of image

Pages without an image at the top have a lower conversion rate, and high quality images are more engaging.

Example of a high-quality image in recommended dimensions

On educations.com you can have one image (940x420 px) on each course page. Having a high-quality image that is aligned with your brand will go a long way when a user is considering your school. 

 

Soft Recommendations

What may positively affect conversion rates on course pages?

Finally, our soft recommendations are areas that we think contribute to a healthy conversion rate but were not defined in our analysis. These features can increase trust and search relevancy, helping students find your profile or courses on our site and converting on your pages.

 

Reviews

Testimonials and positive feedback from previous students are a great way to give insight into your course or institution and grow trust in users.

 

Program content

Adding a program content section outlining the specific modules or structure of a course gives students a better idea of what they will learn.


 

Unique Selling Points

What are your Unique Selling Points (USPs)? Whether you highlight your generous scholarships, your awards and accreditations, or the reasons to study at your school, including the features that make your school unique could increase conversions.


 

Ready to Enhance Your Profile and Increase Your Conversion Rate?

Now that you know what can bring your profile from good to great, go to the customer login to add engaging and relevant content to your profile!