Is your Dance Studio’s Website Doing its Job?

Are you making the most of the marketing tool that is your dance studio’s website? The majority of business owners recognize websites as essential, but don’t use them to best effect.

Sure, your studio’s website may ‘pop’ visually and give visitors good basic information about your dance studio and its offerings, but does it give people a true sense of your school and what it’s about? Does it reach out and grab prospects, making it clear that there is no better studio in the world for them and/or their children?

Getting clear on the purpose and goals of your dance studio’s website will hugely improve the experience of those visiting your site, and that can mean more new students coming through your doors. To that end, here are three exercises that will provide some clarity. Grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and dig in!

Exercise #1 – Your Audience(s):

Consider your audience(s) – who visits your website? Obvious things that come to mind are existing dance parents and prospective customers. Also, students themselves may visit your website. And members of your community? Alumni?

Action: Take a few minutes to make a list of your audiences, either in a fresh text document or on a piece of paper.

Exercise #2 – Your Website’s Purpose:

You may have a fantastic dance studio website design – an easy-to-navigate showstopper with all the bells and whistles. But are you getting your message across? What do you want people to KNOW about you and your dance studio by the time they leave your website?

• Intriguing prospects enough that they reach out and contact you
• Describing your dance classes and programs to people considering dance studios in your area
• Impressing upon your website visitors your status as the #1 dance studio in your area
• Reducing help requests by providing pertinent studio information on your site

Exercise #3 – Visitor Goals:

People come to your website with a specific task in mind. If it isn’t easy to complete that task, they’ll leave. Identifying the most likely visitor goals for your studio’s website lets you gauge whether your website is serving them (and therefore you) well.

What are the top goals visitors want to complete on your website? For example, do they want to find out about class times? Figure out what their child should be wearing to ballet class? Register for classes?

If you’re not sure what visitors’ goals are, consider what questions dance parents and prospects ask most when they send you an email or call your studio. Ideally, you can talk to people in the different audience groups to determine what is important to them. I’m sure they’ll be happy to give you input.

Action: Write down your thoughts and findings, and then rank them. What is likely to be your visitors’ #1 top task or goal?

And now what do you do with your findings?

Now take the information from these exercises and take a look through your dance studio’s website.

Is the website a good match for your intended audience (or audiences)? Does is quickly and clearly convey your website’s purpose? Are the most likely goals of your visitors easy for them to execute?

If so, FANTASTIC… carry on. If not, consider how to modify your website to fix these issues.

Any thoughts on this topic? I’d love to hear! Please post any comments in the section below.