Is No One Visiting your Dance Studio’s Website? Here’s What to Do About It:
Many of us have the “build it and they will come” dream about our websites, but sadly this is not reality. The good news is that there are fairly simple things that can be done to raise your “visitor count” and “website stickiness”.
Visitor count refers to the number of people finding your website, visiting it, and returning, hopefully often. When your website is sticky, visitors stay on it longer and find it so informative and entertaining that they return time after time.
Here are 5 Do’s to Raise your Visitor Count and Website Stickiness:
1. Do keep it current:
The danger with using current information, such as a newsletter, current events page or even a class schedule page, is that when the info shown is no longer current, your website seems automatically dated and out of touch.
People are not likely to keep returning to your website in the hopes that it has been updated. So make it a priority! Put it on your calendar to update once a month or whenever the expiration date of your information is near.
2. Do develop a feeling of community on your site:
Photos from shows and competitions, current studio news, and announcements of the successes of your students will ensure that visitors will keep visiting. Posting these on your site will also reinforce for dancers and parents that they are part of your studio family.
Remember that letting your dancers and dance parents know when you upload new content means they’ll be much more likely to visit. Have your front desk person mention it to those waiting for class to start.
3. Do keep it clean:
Clean and simple, that is. Animation, backgrounds in loud colors, and music that loads automatically with no choice to stop it are some things that can distract visitors from the real purposes of your site. When a visitor simply wants to read the history of your studio, automatically loaded music can be downright annoying, and to annoy customers is probably not one of your site goals.
4. Do check your stats:
Which webpages are most visited on your site? Which are the top exit pages? Your traffic statistics are probably the most valuable feedback you will ever receive about your website, so analyze them!
Take a look at the content on your most visited pages — can you provide more on those subjects? Also consider why people are leaving from particular pages — is there perhaps a lack of user-friendliness on those pages that is compelling people to abandon them?
Social icons are often responsible for encouraging people to leave your site. While it’s great for people to visit your social accounts, if you notice that people are often exiting to a social platform, you might consider putting your social icons in a less obvious spot your website.
Google Analytics is an incredible, free service that generates detailed statistics about a website’s traffic and traffic sources, but it’s also incredibly complex and can be difficult to work with. If Google Analytics is just too intimidating, the free stat counter called StatCounter.com is a worthy alternative. Either way, if your website is in need of an analytics service, you’ll likely need to contact your website designer to implement it.
5. Do put your website address everywhere:
True, this is an offline-online marketing tip, but it can not be overemphasized: Put your website address everywhere you can! This means on business cards, signage, flyers, postcards and all other advertising and promotional materials.
The only place you don’t need to put your website address is on your website itself, although even then you can lead visitors through the site by saying things such as “visit our Schedule Page to determine which classes you’d like to register for”. These internal hyperlinks not only make your website user friendly, they are excellent for your search engine optimization.
Alright, I’ll admit it. I get so busy running our ‘web design for dance studios’ business that I can fall short on executing some of these tips myself. Studio owners often tell me this is the case for them as well — between running the studio, managing the business, preparing for recital and competitions, and life at home, your website can be unintentionally ignored. Let’s resolve together to schedule in time for keeping our websites fresh and running well!
After all, what good is our website if no one visits it?
Best wishes,
Stacey