As the UK moves forward from the pandemic the rise in mature students is something to monitor in order to make sure your website is having the right conversation with them.
Mature entrants to full-time undergraduate courses starting in 2021 were up 24% back in February in part triggered by rising unemployment which typically sees trends of more people staying in or returning to education.
Whether at FE or HE level, content that appeals to the typical student group is unlikely to be as effective for mature learners and in some cases can put them off.
As with any audience group, once you know what influences their decision-making process you can work back through your content strategy and identify how to start developing early conversations and conversion opportunities through your digital channels.
We’ve worked on a number of projects where applying cues.ai specifically to develop conversations on the same course but with different learners has proved really impactful. Here are three top things you can do to get started.
- List what matters most to each audience group. If you know that part-time options, flexible work, or on-campus childcare is of interest to your mature learners then make sure you feature it early on within the conversation. If you don’t know what matters to different student groups – ask them! You can use cues.ai for short Q&A type functions as well as determining what information prospects need next.
- An image says a thousand words. Diversity is critically important to how you present your courses to students. Include age within that bracket too. Once you identify a prospect is a mature learner, when they visit your course pages, think about the images that best reflect the student experience they would have with you.
- Make it personal. If you collect information through cues.ai and other website analytics you’ll be able to offer a much more personalised website experience to prospects. Whether that’s completing entry forms, exploring the next most relevant content since their last visit to your website, or offering suitable opportunities to visit campus, you can make mature learners feel much more welcomed and supported through some simple steps to inform your interactions with them.
Intrigued about what cues.ai could do for your site? Contact us and we’ll give you some examples of where it might work for you.
