With tens of thousands of dance studios throughout the United States, it’s essential that you take steps to make yours stand out. These days, every business needs to develop an online presence. One of the best ways to get ahead of your competitors and appeal to new students is to create a phenomenal website that attracts and informs interested students, enticing them to choose your dance studio above all the rest. So, how do you do it? What should you include on your website?
First Step For Website Creation
Before you begin creating a website, you must consider your branding and what you want the capability to be. What is your brand? Who is your target audience? What are your long-term and short-term goals? How do you want people to view your studio? Do you want to offer online registration and payments? By answering these questions, you’ll be able to get a good sense of the type of information to include before beginning the actual website creation process.
10 Essential Features for Dance Studio Websites
After you’ve answered all the questions above in as much detail as possible, you can move on to mapping out the ten most essential features for your dance studio website.
1. Create an easy-to-remember URL
When you create a URL for your website, try to use your studio name or another recognizable name associated with your brand and opt for the dot-com extension instead of dot-net. If the name you choose isn’t available, come up with an alternative, easy-to-remember URL that is relevant to your business.
2. Add contact forms
Make it easy for interested potential students or parents to get in touch with you by adding contact forms to each page of your site. You can place them out of the way at the top or bottom of the page, but having them there makes it super simple for you to gather contact information and allows people get in touch with you.
3. Use an aesthetically pleasing design
There’s nothing worse than a cluttered website. Like a cluttered room or office, it leads to a cluttered mind. Make sure you use an aesthetically pleasing design that uses a consistent color palette. You can be minimalistic in your design while remaining user-friendly and showing customers what your studio is all about.
4. Add informative blog content
The bulk of your website traffic will come from blogs. Blogs should be informative pieces written by subject matter experts and designed to help users who come to your site looking for solutions to a problem they’re having. Your blogs can be anything from a recap of a recent recital or ideas on ways to celebrate a dancer’s first class.
5. Make good use of multimedia
People love videos and pictures. Post a combination of both to give users and prospective students or parents a glimpse into your studio. For videos, you can post instructional content, clips of recitals, videos of your dancers, virtual tours of your studio, and other relevant material. Add a photo gallery to your site and post group shots, action shots, studio shots and more.
6. Add links to social media
If someone is interested in your studio, they’ll most likely want to look you up on social media. Make sure you post links to your Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts to make it easy for folks to find you online. If you don’t want the links front and center, most websites will link to them in the footer of a page.
7. Offer easy online registration
Make it easy for interested students or parents to register with your studio by using an online class registration portal complete with options to pay for classes right then and there.
Did you know that online registration can help you increase your student registration numbers? Dance by Design Studios increased overall student growth by 736% with the help of Jackrabbit Dance. Download the case study to see exactly how they did it!
Watch the first part of a three-video series to learn how you can your registration online -> Watch Here
8. Post a calendar, list of events and class schedules
Get current and prospective students to visit your site regularly by posting current event information, class schedules and upcoming social opportunities. This creates a single location where people know they can always find information.
9. Create an amazing “About Us” page
An amazing About Us page should paint a picture of your studio history and what you currently offer. You want to add enough information to make people feel like they know who you are and what your studio values are.
10. Don’t forget to include a contact page
In addition to a contact form, make sure you have a separate contact page on the site as well. List all of your contact information such as your studio’s physical address, phone number, email address, and social media links. That way people can contact you in whatever way they are comfortable with.
How to Stand Out
With those 10 features, you’ve answered all the important questions and mapped out the essentials for your dance studio website. While your features are sure to be unique, mostly because they’re coming from you – how can you really be sure that your site is going to stand out? Here are a few fail-proof ways:
- Go above and beyond with your content and videos – embed links or link to a social platform to keep everyone updated on your studio happenings.
- Include sponsorship information or link to your Patreon or PayPal accounts to give people a chance to contribute to the future of your studio.
- Ensure all links are working (internal and external) – attention to detail is the key to a successful website and business. If you have a bunch of broken links scattered all over your site, it’s going to appear sloppy. It will not only be frustrating for users but will diminish your professional reputation.
- Integrate your website with Dance Studio Management Software. This will guarantee that your class schedule is up to date and you can access class rosters from anywhere.
Now that you understand the importance of building a stand-out website for your dance studio and how to do it, you can get to work on building the site you need to grow your business. If you really want to increase the chances of your website gaining recognition, consider working with a web design or marketing company that can help you create the site of your dreams while ensuring that it won’t get lost in the far reaches of cyberspace.
See how Dance by Design Studios optimized their site for increasing student registration and became a multi-site studio by reading the student enrollment case study.
