What is your camp's website strategy?

Sometimes we spend so much time trying to drive people to our websites we forget what our goals are for doing so. What do you want prospects to do once they arrive at your website?

I'll bet everyone has different goals for what they're trying to accomplish with their sites. But I also hope we all have these same three goals in common:

1. We want people to stay on our sites
2. We want people to come back to our sites
3. We want to convert visitors into paying customers/enrollments

When people hit your website and don't find what they're looking for, statistics show they'll leave in seconds. To keep them longer, provide fast-loading pages and easy-to-find, relevant content.

People won't stay on your site forever, so your strategy then becomes getting them to come back. Games, contests, and interactive tools like blogs and message boards can help.

Naturally, we all want a well-designed website that's nice to look at. But I'd rather have an ugly site that gets people to sign up rather than a beautiful one that doesn't generate enrollment. I assume you feel the same.

The first (and most obvious) solution is having an online enrollment enabled on your site. If you don't, then at least make your printable enrollment form available prominent places all over your site.

Take some time to identify your goals for your camp's website. And check out this article for a Top 10 list of ways to help convert website visitors into paying customers.

If your site's doing what you want it to, great! If not, take the action you need to bring your site up to speed. The time you spend making your website work better can be the difference between an empty camp and a full one.