This past year 2020 has been a difficult year for many of us in Canada and around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it especially difficult for students and teachers with a lot of uncertainty and challenges. Not only has teaching moved online so has recruiting students.
Traditional student communication and recruiting channels – education fairs, high school visits, open houses, information sessions, campus tours, etc – have all been affected and have either moved online or stopped.
This may explain why we have seen record traffic on the SchoolFinder Group of websites; ScholarshipsCanada.com, StudyinCanada.com and SchoolFinder.com.
Website Traffic Sets Records
The number of web visitor sessions grew in 2020 by 26% to a record 3 million +, and the pageviews grew by even more to over 24 million – another record. The move online paired with the uncertainly caused by the pandemic has created a thirst for web content which explains the 23% increase in the average pageviews per session we saw in 2020.
| 2020 | 2019 | Change | |
| Sessions | 3,083,584 | 2,456,855 | 26% |
| Pageviews | 24,436,622 | 15,797,521 | 55% |
| Average Pageviews / Session | 7.9 | 6.4 | 23% |
Content Sees a Massive Increase
2020 was our best year yet for content. In 2019, we served over 800,000 article pageviews. In 2020 that number increased to over 1.9 million views. While some of this was (%18) was COVID-related material, the majority of the content was focused on student life, scholarships, career prep, and program offerings – all the good stuff that helps students in their education journey.
| 2020 | 2019 | Change | |
| Total Article Views | 1,928,341 | 803,863 | 139% |
| Average Views / Article | 873 | 284 | 207% |
Student Leads and Sign Ups Grows
In 2020 we also saw a big increase in the number of website monthly sign ups, growing 31% to 14,992 per month. The number of student information requests (leads) also grew to more than 128,000 in 2020.
| 2020 | 2019 | Change | |
| Leads Generated | 128,848 | 112,703 | 14% |
| Average Monthly Signups | 14,992 | 11,450 | 31% |
It’s impossible to know what lasting impact COVID will have on student recruitment. And certainly there are advantages to face-to-face human interaction, but there are some communication and recruiting advantages to online platforms such as the SchoolFinder Group.
I’d like to thank those organizations who helped us help students in 2020 and invite any organization who would like to help us in 2021 join our platform.
Stay safe and looking forward to 2021,
Chris Wilkins
Founder & CEO
The SchoolFinder Group | EDge Interactive
info@schoolfindergroup.com
