11 Best Practices for Swim School Website

Do we really need a website for our swimming school to grow? Yes! Nowadays, when people are looking for swimming lessons, they often check online first. Your website is like the first impression they get of your school.

But do you need a fancy, expensive website? Not necessarily, especially if you're just starting out and don't have a lot of money to spare. Websites can cost anywhere from nothing to over $50,000, depending on what you want. Most swimming schools spend between $800 and $5,000 for a website.

Your website has two main jobs: to make your school look appealing to potential students and to convince those visitors to sign up for lessons. So, it's important to have a website that does these things well.

Here are 11 important things to include on your swimming school website, based on advice from swimming schools around the world.

1. Page Load Time

One of the biggest factors affecting whether people stay on your website isn't its design or colors—it's how fast it loads, both on computers and phones.

Imagine this: You're on Amazon, ready to buy a new book, water bottle, or shirt. But the page takes forever—more than 10 or 15 seconds—to load. How does that make you feel? Frustrated, right?

Your potential customers feel the same way. If your website loads slowly, most visitors are likely to leave and check out your competitors instead. Google pays attention to how fast websites load when deciding which ones to show in its search results.

Google thinks a website that loads in under 3 seconds is okay, and under 2 seconds is really fast. If your website is slower, Google might see it as not user-friendly and rank it lower in search results.

If fewer people can find you on Google, you're basically giving your competitors a big advantage.

2. Device Compatibility & Responsive Design

Responsive design is a fundamental concept in the development of swimming school websites. It refers to the ability of a website to adapt its layout and content to fit various screen sizes and devices, ranging from large desktop monitors to smaller mobile phones.

As highlighted by thewebmaster.com in their 2023 report, a significant portion of online searches, approximately 60%, are conducted on mobile devices, while the remaining 40% are carried out on laptops or desktop computers. This data underscores the importance of ensuring that your swimming school website is accessible and user-friendly across all devices commonly used by potential customers.

To maximize your website's effectiveness in capturing and converting prospects, it's essential to ensure that it is optimized for desktops, laptops, tablets (such as iPads), and mobile phones (including both Android and iPhones). A responsive website not only enhances the user experience but also increases the likelihood of lead generation from visitors accessing your site on different devices.

Moreover, responsive websites tend to perform better in terms of search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines like Google prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their search results, which means that having a responsive design can contribute to higher rankings and increased visibility for your swimming school website.

In summary, investing in a responsive design for your swimming school website is crucial for meeting the diverse needs of your audience and maximizing your online presence. By ensuring that your website is accessible and optimized across various devices, you can enhance user engagement, improve lead conversion rates, and boost your overall SEO performance.

3. Above the Scroll: Optimizing Your Website's First Impression

The idea of "above the fold" comes from newspapers, where the top part of a folded paper was what people saw first. Publishers realized that putting interesting headlines and stories there boosted sales because it was the first thing readers noticed.

Similarly, on websites, we call this top part "above the scroll"—it's what visitors see without scrolling down. It's really important to make this part of your website appealing because it's the first impression for potential customers.

Here are four important things to focus on in this section:

Clear Headline: Have a short headline that tells visitors what your swimming school offers and why it's special.
Call to Action: Include a button or form that tells visitors what to do next, like signing up for lessons.
Contact Information: Make sure your phone number is easy to find so people can get in touch with you.

Optional Description: You can also add a short description to give more details about your school and classes if needed.

By paying attention to these things, you can create a website for your swimming school that grabs people's attention and convinces them to become students.

4. Incorporating CTAs and Offers: Prompting Action on Your Website

Adding CTAs (Calls to Action) to your website is a simple but effective way to get potential customers to do something. CTAs are usually buttons or forms that guide visitors on your site to the next step, like booking a trial class, claiming an offer, or starting your services.

These CTAs can say things like "Book a Trial Class," "Get a Free Trial," "Claim Offer," or "Get Started," giving clear instructions on how visitors can sign up for your school.

To make it even more enticing, think about offering an irresistible deal to encourage people to try your classes. This offer should be unique, low-risk, and high-value, making your school stand out. While a free trial class is common, trying different offers can make your offer more appealing. Here are some examples:

5 Free Classes
4 Weeks for $39.00
30 Days of Free Classes

Remember, you don't need an amazing offer to get leads from your website, but offering a great deal can boost your conversion rate a lot. At Monstro, we use a "Starter Kit" as our CTA, and it's been really effective in attracting new customers.

5. Utilize Personalized Imagery

From our experience, we've found that swimming school websites with real photos—like team pictures or instructors with students—usually do better than those with stock images.

Real photos, like happy students or instructors teaching, make your school feel more real and genuine. They show potential customers that regular people, just like them, are part of your swimming school and enjoying it.

6. Guiding Your Visitors Forward

We often assume that others will use our website just like we do, based on our own habits. But everyone is different, and they'll interact with your website in their own way.

What's easy for you might not be obvious to your visitors. That's why it's important to show them the way forward.

In all our swimming school website designs, we include a clear section that explains the exact steps someone needs to take to sign up for classes. This makes sure visitors know exactly what to do next if they want to try our classes.

By using these strategies, you can create a website for your swimming school that's easy for visitors to use and encourages them to become students.

When my wife looks for after-school activities for our kids, the first thing she does is read reviews from other parents. These reviews really influence her decisions.

While Google reviews are helpful, having testimonials right on your website can boost how many people sign up.

Sadly, a lot of swimming school websites don't have testimonials, or they only have a few without any pictures. At our school, we make sure to show lots of testimonials from happy customers right on our website.

8. Have a Pricing Page

Did you know that 96% of swimming school websites don't show their prices? Many owners are afraid to put prices online because they worry people will only care about finding the cheapest option, instead of seeing the value their school offers.

Some swimming schools do show prices and even let people sign up and pay on their website. But there's another way that a lot of school owners don't think about: having a pricing page with a form for people to ask for a price list.

Even though the prices aren't shown upfront, this allows your swimming school to attract more leads from people who are interested in pricing while still controlling when and how they share that information.

A chat widget is a small icon at the bottom of your website that lets users start a chat with you or your team to ask about your swimming school and classes.

While live chat can be useful, we recommend caution unless you have staff available all the time or use an AI system to respond. One downside of live chat is that it often leads to questions about pricing, and if the user doesn't like the prices, they might leave without talking more.

Our messaging tool works differently: it first gets the user's name, phone number, and optionally their email before starting a conversation. This lets you follow up with leads by text, even if you're not available to chat right away. Plus, with Monstro, you get access to an AI that can talk to leads for you through our messaging tool.

10. Easy Way to Call

Some people like filling out forms, while others prefer to call directly. But many swimming schools hide their phone numbers on their websites, making them hard to find.

To help both types of people, we put a "Click to Call" phone number right at the top of the menu. This lets visitors who prefer calling to easily start a call with our clients.

11. Use Scheduler (Optional)

Adding a schedule or calendar to your swimming school website could boost conversions, but it's not always a big change. That's why it's seen as optional.

Aside from pricing, a lot of people want to know about your class schedule. If you let visitors see your schedule online or even book classes from a calendar, you might encourage more people to try your classes.

How to Get Your Swimming School Website

Creating a successful swimming school website isn't easy. You'll need a graphic designer, a web developer, and a CRO specialist to make it work well. But that's just the start.

To keep getting visitors and potential students to your site, you'll also need to learn about SEO to make sure your site shows up well on Google. This whole process can take a lot of time and money. Even if you get a cheap $800 website from Fiverr, if it doesn't bring in leads and students, you're wasting your money.

If you're serious about improving your online presence with a successful swimming school website, we can help. For a limited time, Monstro is offering to set up our proven swimming school website for free when you use any of our swimming school software options.

To find out more and see how our software and system can help grow your swimming school, just book a free demo call below.