Is Your Dance Studio's Website Costing You Students?

Hello, friends. I'm Amanda Barr.

And I'm Rebecca Lou Brennan. And welcome to Dance Principles United, the podcast.

Together, we are passionate about helping studio owners with the business of running their studio.

Join us as we talk everything from marketing systems, studio culture, motherhood, life, and everything in between.

This is the Dance Principles United Podcast.

Well, hello, friends, and welcome to the D. Dance Principles United Podcast. I have the incredible Amanda with me in the studio. We've been doing a lot of podcasting today, but it's been super fun having a ball.

Hey, can I tell a funny story before we get started? Can I embarrass the shit out of you?

I feel like the funny stories always come back on Beck. Here we go. This is funny.

Well, so I'm a little bit obsessed, guys.

Beck.

Beck got in today. I sent Bec a gift in the mail last week and I was like, she hasn't thanked me for it. She hasn't messaged me. I've got to ask her if she received it. I checked. I actually went and checked the tracking. I'm like, yeah, she received it. I wonder if she didn't open it. I thought I'd be kind and send her a little gift. Like, it was only a little gift in the mail. And I got here today and she's like, hey, guess what, Amanda, I bought those. And I'm like, no, I sent them to you.

Oops. I definitely had been looking those up.

On Amazon and I just thought that.

I'd go, push, go. We were.

What we're actually talking about is, you know, like, the things are back from the 80s. I'm wearing them today. But, you know, they're like, massively from the 80s. I remember my mum used to wear them and they're like sleeve pusher upper is like bands that you. Is. What do we call them? They're like a lot like bands that.

You put around you, but like a fancy, like, metal.

Yeah.

And I've been going on and on about how much I love them to you every time you have them on. Yeah.

Because I've got a whole set and I, yeah. Wear them all the time. And Beck's like, I need to get some. I need to get some. So I sent her some and she's like, guess what? I bought some of it.

You didn't.

I sent them to you. You didn't buy. That's our funny story for the day. Because I'm like. I was saying before, I'm absolutely. I've come back to my love for Amazon Prime.

You are obsessed with Amazon.

Oh, My God, it's so good. Because I'm in like regional area. Normally when I do order his makes laughing because she just cannot believe she thinks that I live in like the middle of nowhere.

You do live in the middle of nowhere.

It is not the middle of nowhere.

It is.

It's the edge of the middle of nowhere.

Guys. She can't get UberEats.

I cannot get edible.

She can't get bulk billing.

No.

That does my head in. I've never ever heard of that. I can't believe that you have to pay for a doctor.

We most definitely have to pay a lot of money for it.

Unbelievable. Yeah. So you are in the middle of nowhere.

We're in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah.

The one thing I can get is Amazon next day delivery.

You can get sleeve pusher.

I can get sleeve pusher up.

You can't get some tie for dinner. No, but you can get a sleeve.

Pusher and I can order up till 9pm at night and get it the next day. But I looked it up for you because I changed to your address and you can order till like 11pm and get it the next day. How cool is that?

That's crazy.

And it's free. Anyway, this is not what our podcast is on. But good service and easy to use websites is what our podcast is on. And Amazon have both of those things.

This is what I like. My segue. My segue. Is there many days that you don't get something from Amazon?

That's the big question.

Do you sometimes have things turn up and then go, oh, forgot it. Forgot that I ordered that. Didn't even realize.

I used to do that a lot when I was breastfeeding. And like, I remember saying this, like, I think because I was just so bored in the middle of the night and feeding and up. You know, anyone that has young kids knows what that's like. And I used to order things online in the middle of the night, have no recollection of ordering it. And yeah, stuff would just.

And now. Is it because you've had one too many champagnes on a Friday night?

No, I'm a bit better. But I do think, like, it must be terrible for the environment, but I'm trying to like, think about all the postage men that are getting jobs because they deliver different packages to my house every day. Because that's the thing with Amazon prime. And it's free. It's like $10 something here with free delivery. And then I buy a $20 something here. And you know, I like. I do things like, you Know, toilet paper and get it delivered. And just by itself, like, I'm like, oh, you know, need some toilet paper. You know what?

I can see Nathan's eyes rolling.

We're very close with our. Our FedEx guy, like, is like our bestie. It's a real issue.

Anyway, sorry, I took us back into the SEC off the Segway. Anyway, we're talking about websites.

We are talking about websites. Not Amazon websites, but actual websites for your studio and websites that convert and that they're there for their purpose. Because I think so often we forget what the purpose of our studio website is.

What is the purpose of a studio website, then?

It is to get trials into our studio for new students. It is not there for our current students. It is not there for a newsletter or for information. It is solely there to collect data of potential new students.

Absolutely. And I think back in the day and back when people had more time on their hands and would actually read things.

Yes.

You know, we used to have the. About us and the other.

My values.

Yeah.

Like all this kind of. Yeah.

I don't actually think anyone opts into things that much anymore.

No.

Well, maybe it's just me. I would never read a website.

Absolutely not. I look at how professional it looks. I look at the overall arching, you know, like first glance of a website.

Yep.

You can tell if it's like, a professional company or a, like, homemade company. Right. But I don't actually read it. Never. Absolutely not. And the easier and the quicker it is for me to find what I want, the better.

Agree.

Yeah. We don't want to scroll, so we know that a website is there to get new students in. Whether that's for most of us, it would probably be through trials. Whether it's a free trial or paid trial, whatever, but it's to get a trial into our studio. So what kind of things does a potential new student want to see on your website, do you reckon back?

Well, I think they want to see happy kids having a great time.

Absolutely.

The end. And I think they want to see their age group, their child reflected. Yeah, I think that's very important. I can tell you some things I don't think they want to see. I don't think they want to see point shoes. I don't think they want to see kids doing crazy legs and insane things.

Scary faces.

Scary faces. I think that would actually put a lot of people off and a lot of the people that you want to opt into your brand. And I say this all the time, but, you know, I look at Pause. And I think, okay, I might get two, maybe three kids from other studios, which I do not want, by the way.

Yes.

Who are looking at me and going, yep, they're super elite and we want to be elite, so we want to go there.

Yeah.

That's not a big amount of people when you know you should be enrolling 100 to 200 kids a year into your studio. So everyone else who's coming in probably doesn't know that much about dance and probably thinks that some of that stuff is pretty crazy and scary and that their child could never achieve it.

Yes. Interesting. Right. And obviously we're talking for the majority of studios, including elite studios like yours. Right. And because usually we want to train them to be at that level. We want to start them at the beginning of the journey. And the beginning of the journey doesn't involve pointe shoes, it doesn't involve crazy leg mounts. It also doesn't include like the about us teachers page that talks about the teacher who went to, you know, whatever full time course in 1998. Like, who cares? Because most people also don't know what that a normal parent doesn't know what that full time studio's name is and why that matters.

Yep.

You know, they, that actually means nothing to them whatsoever, if they even bothered to read it.

Yeah. I think we're constantly trying to prove ourselves of we've achieved all this and we've got these credentials and you know, we've, we've got these amazing teachers or whatever it might be. But you're actually just trying to prove yourself to your peers, not really to parents. Because parents don't actually care about any of that.

No. They want their kids to have a good time and have fun dancing and if they grow up to be something else, well, great. But that's not the starting point for them.

Generally. Not. No.

That's really interesting. So I think that's really important to see what they don't want to see. The other thing that they do want is ease of use. Because, you know, I like to give this kind of analogy. I always think that it's that. How do parents view your website? For me, I, I'm looking at activities for my kids, you know, perhaps in the evening, whilst one's watching TV in one room, one's watching TV in the other room. So I can hear both TVs going, I'm cooking dinner, I have a glass of wine. I'm exhausted. You know, on my phone, don't forget on my phone, not on a laptop. I think that's really, really important. And I'm scrolling, but I'm multitasking, doing 4,000 different things at one time. I'm not sitting down going, okay, I'm going to look into this really seriously. Now it's multitasking exercise. So it needs to be easy to digest and easy to understand.

Absolutely. And it's, it's interesting when you can go into your website as a different type of parent.

Absolutely.

So you know, go into your website as a preschool parent and see how they would feel when it immediately pops up. And I know I tell this the Phoenix basketball story all the time, but I went into three or four websites to get him to go to basketball and I didn't choose three of them because it didn't have a preschool school kid, which he was a preschooler at the time, on their front page. So I didn't think it was for preschool. I didn't look deeply into it.

Yeah, because you couldn't be bothered. You're like next.

Yep, a hundred percent. So it's interesting, like go into it as a preschool parent, then go into it as a 5 to 6 year old, then go into it as a 10 year old. Like is it appealing to all of those?

Absolutely. And so if you haven't done that for a while, like we absolutely encourage you to do that because a website is not a set and forget thing. And so often we do our website, we're like, oh, actually don't know where that button goes. Or we go to so many studios, websites and it's like, has your 2021 timetable still linked somewhere in it or you know, whatever old. And if people see that, they're like, oh, they don't care. Right. Yeah, that sometimes might like it's like, oh, they haven't tried very hard, they're not working on it. Yeah.

Or I often even think, have they closed? Yeah, maybe it's not even open anymore if it's still 2023. Like I think that sometimes as well.

Absolutely. And you know we're redoing our website for Dance Principles United at the moment because y. Yeah, ours was looking tired. Like it happens to the best of us and sometimes we're like, oh, we need a refresh. So if you haven't been to your website for a little bit, I would recommend that you jump on on your phone most definitely. And look at what it looks like. Look at it from a preschool's parent parents perspective. Look at it from a 8 year old's parents perspective. See how many times you have to. How hard it is to Find the info for a new parent. Does it make sense? You know, is it really easy to book a trial?

That's the biggest one, I think.

Absolutely. You know, if they have to scroll and find and go, oh, where is that? They just click off it. Right. You just get distracted. You, you know how often we just go back to Facebook, right? Do you do that? Back to Facebook, back to Instagram?

I'm okay. I said in the last podcast, I'm looking for clothes for retreat. Right. And so you know how it pops up and makes you do put your email in if to get this discount.

I.

If that pops up, I'm out of that.

Yeah.

That's how much I can't stand any of that stuff anymore. Like I'm just so. And I feel like all of our competitors are like, like everyone in the space is like that now. Like all of our parents are like that. They don't want to see that stuff. They just want a quick opt in to the trial. The end.

Easy.

Yeah.

So there should be a really clear button at the top that they don't have to scroll really far for. That's like book my free trial. You know, something super easy. You know, not here. Go to the contact us form and you have to write in there. I would like to book a free trial because actually have to type that out. That's a lot of like for some people, they get distracted and they forget to do that.

Also like asking them for too many details. Yeah, it just needs to be named. Email, phone number, the end.

Nothing more.

No, don't start asking them for credit card details.

Absolutely not. Nathan's pet peeve is when it sends them to a studio software to like sign up if you're. Because most people, very few parents are ready to sign up.

No.

Without having a chat, having a meeting with you, knowing stuff. So it shouldn't be sending you like studio softwares are great. They are awesome. You know, if you're using dsp, Jackrabbit, Class Manager, they're all great softwares. However, I would never be sending a new parent who's looking at a free trial there because there's too many forms to fill out, too many fields. People don't want to put their credit card. They don't even know if they really want to come. They just want a quick opt in to see about a free trial, get some more info. Yeah, absolutely. So make it easy for them. Don't like make them jump through too many hoops.

Absolutely. Something that we've got on our website that I think Works really well, is just age group. So I've got, got preschool, they click through to preschool, five, six years, they click through to that. You know, just with really simple click throughs.

Absolutely.

Whereas like, you know when people have like superstar jazz, like what the is superstar jazz?

It kills me. Bronze Level 3. What is Bronze Level 3? Tap. I have no idea.

They probably don't even know what tap is, let alone what bronze. I mean I don't think Tim even knew what tap was when we first got together. Yeah, yeah.

And using words like, you know, this is the superstar level or this is the even like words like tiny dancer or mini. Mini program.

Mini mean.

Is Minnie a 3 to 4 year old? Is Mini a 5, 6? Like I don't know. It's different everywhere and it's different in a daycare setting to a gymnastics, to a dance, to a swimming. Like call it what it is, do it by age, do it by school years if that works, like whatever. But call it what it is, keep.

It super simple for them. And I think not having too many pages, like yeah, there's so, it's so unnecessary. Like people are just going to opt out straight away.

Absolutely. I was telling someone why were we talking about this? But I remember creating websites, you know, like back, you know, we're talking 20 something years ago and I remember map, doing a website map on a piece of paper and like all the pages and all the menu options at the top and the dropdowns that I'd have. And I remember very vividly going and what else can I add? It was more like it was a. You were more important. I'm literally talking about when I was 20 or something like that. And you know, the more pages you had on your website, the more important you were. You know what I mean? It was like it's more of a real business if you have all those things, you know. Oh, and we've got to have a map page and we've got to have a details about the teachers and details about each style of classes. And you know we used to have the gallery, the gallery with photos and all this kind of shit. No, we don't need any of that anymore.

No, but we did need it then you know why we didn't have social media.

And that was at the time what we did. Like, you know, we had an awesome website for our studio that many studios wouldn't have even had a website at the time. Like, you know. But things have changed. People went to that complex for a while and now it's gone back to simple. People want something that's super simple. They just want it to look really good and just be able to get the info that they want straight away.

Absolutely. And I, I don't know, I remember you know, training, I'm sure you were in the training with me where it was like do not send people back to social media on your website. Like don't have that Instagram, Facebook, but I mean I don't have that on my website but I'm like it would it really be that detrimental now? Because actually that probably is the window and there still should be an opt in on your bio anyway.

Absolutely.

Maybe even that part of things has changed.

Absolutely. Our new DPU website will link back to our Instagram Y because it's different.

It's very different now because people will opt into brands through social media whereas 10 years ago they didn't.

No. And now probably more so than a website probably your Instagram gets or your Facebook gets more inquiries than your website. So it's an interesting like yeah, it shifts and it evolves and so that's why it's really important that you're looking through your website through new eyes and evolving it as it goes. Because your website might be doing you more harm than good and you don't even realize it because if it is taking people too long to get your details, if it looks unprofessional, they're probably just going to go to the next studio down the road. So take some time, look through it and really give it a like a really great like once over or multiple time over and see how you can optimize it to make it better.

Also if you can get someone who's not in the dance world to go into your website and see if that they can understand and navigate it. Because I'll tell you what I find is really complicated sometimes dance competition websites I really struggle with dance. Entering a comp entering and then knowing.

Where to get the, the syllabus and.

Age groups and then like the voice critiques and like that. I find that complicated, you know and I just think I could talk about.

That for a long time but I just.

But I think it's another thing of a business owner knowing their stuff so much and just thinking that's so obvious of where you'd go, know why anyone wouldn't like I know I can go onto my paws website and of course I know exactly where to go to get things because it's my whole world.

Yes.

But I think when you get someone in there that it's not their whole world. Absolutely. And they're actually looking for a class and how difficult that possibly is. And whether they actually see their preschooler in there or not, it's very different.

Absolutely. And how focused they are when they do it as well. Right. Like, I think that's such a big thing. Like how many glasses of wine have they had on the couch when they're looking at it? Because that's a reality.

Yep.

For a lot of moms that. That's when they're looking at things and that's when they're trying to. That's when I do my, like, work for, you know, booking for the school disco and all of that kind of stuff. Like. And it is the reality. So I think that's really important to be looking at as well. So we would definitely suggest that you have a look at your website. Nate suggested we should do some website audits as well.

I'd love to do a website or.

Absolutely. So what are we going to do? The first five people that comment, we're going to do a website audit. Just make sure. Comment below wherever you are watching this and we will drop a loom website audit through to you. That might really help you improve and optimize it. Getting ready for 2026. Because that's the ideal time now to start getting that ready.

Oh, absolutely. Thanks so much, guys. We hope you enjoyed this and make sure you like and subscribe. We'll see you soon.

Thanks, friends. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dance Principles United podcast. If you'd love to learn more from us, we have a special offer just for our podcast listeners. Go to the link in the show notes right now to get two weeks free in Dance Principals United Tribe. We would love to see you there.