Everyone needs a web site these days. But there are big differences between college enrolment systems and how they are able to deliver the benefits.

Reduced costs

When ish first implemented a new website for Sydney Community College, online enrolments increased from 18% to 42% in the first six months and to 75% this year. The web site went from an initial 50,000 page views per month to 100,000 six months later and in 2007 peaked at over 200,000 per month. These figures indicate direct savings. Every student who uses the web site saves one or more phone calls to administration staff. As each call takes an average of 4 to 6 minutes, this indicates an huge cost benefit to the college. A saving of 96 calls a day is equivalent to a full time staff member. Add to this the time and money spent on staff data entry of mail and fax enrolments and the savings can be enormous.

More than just the saving of staff time when taking phone and mail enrolments, the web site is also powerful way to get information to potential students. For many colleges we surveyed, for every successful enrolment administration staff take approximately 12 calls. Many of these general inquiries can be fulfilled through the web site: questions about course content, tutor details, dates and times, costs and discounts.

Because credit card payments are processed automatically by our system, both human error and credit card fraud problems are reduced. This automatic processing also simplifies accounting.

Postage and phone call costs (especially to mobiles) are reduced. For example, when a course is cancelled, students can automatically be sent an email and/or an SMS informing them. Students can use their web login to update their personal details. This saves a phone call from the student every time they change address or phone number.

Printing costs can be reduced since the college catalogue or brochure can become a more focussed marketing tool and not purely an exhaustive list of every course, location and date.

Marketing

With the background of ish’s design and marketing expertise your site can become more than just an ecommerce site. It can be the primary marketing tool with which to promote and brand the courses you offer.

Our website is flexible and nimble. With the ability to create new courses at short notice (even in the middle of a term), you will no longer need long lead times associated with printed marketing material. Timetable, venue, tutor and other data updates and changes can be made quickly.

Updates are live on the website within about 15 minutes from when you enter them in onCourse. Your staff do not need to know html, contact a web developer or use any special tools. They simply update the information within onCourse and everything else is taken care of automatically.