International schools rely on web traffic to be able to tell their unique stories, especially for international visitors who may not be in the same city.
Since the coronavirus started to spiral out of control outside of China, many websites around the world saw a rapid decline in traffic; unless your site was news or an online grocery shop, chances are people were looking elsewhere.
A Barometer for International Schools
We thought it would be an interesting moment to look at how things unfolded, how they are looking now and potentially what the trends look like going forward. For schools wondering when the world might start to look normal again, sites like ours offer another data point to add into the planning.
So into some detail. Prior to the middle of February our site traffic was on a very strong growth rate - somewhere between 30 to 50% growth month on month over the previous 6 months. All was looking great! And then something happened around the middle of the month - initially a bit of a plateau for a few weeks and then a nearly 50% collapse!
We checked the site, we checked our SEO tools - all seemed fine...so onto Google, are we alone? Anyone else in the same boat? As it turned out we weren't alone - according to an article from Neil Patel, the travel industry as a whole saw in the region of a 50% decline in web traffic. Obviously, it makes perfect sense as who was going to be booking a trip in March?
The Positive News
The image above says a million words - while everyone was in the initial shock, researching the next school wasn't a thing. In most cases people were trying to find out details about whether schools were actually open. Over next few weeks things stayed quiet but gradually, in line with the easing of restrictions in many parts of the world things have climbed back to where they were. If anything we're starting to see some 'pent up demand' as those people who sat on their hands during the worst of it are now starting to plan for next year again.
Where Have People Been Looking?
Below is an animation of some selected cities on our site all the way back to January through to the end of April. A few key points we noticed:
Initially things looked OK in Malaysia but when that changed, we noticed a marked decline in people searching on Kuala Lumpur. You'll see Singapore go flying past in March but that has stabilised now.
Seoul climbed in our rankings consistently, maybe a reflection of the view that South Korea was handling the crsis the best of almost any country?
In Europe we noticed Berlin and Lisbon searches were consistent but Spain and France (for example) definitely reduced in volume
Where Has Traffic Originated?
Generally a lot of our traffic comes from Asia and the United States. This stayed consistent during the worst of the crisis...one interesting thing to notice was the traffic from Spain jumped up when the lock down was at its worst...perhaps dreaming of an escape?
Conclusion
It seems like we're through the worst of it, certainly in terms of people stopping all plans they previously had. Assuming people are able to relocate between countries by September (with precautions no doubt) it does seem that everyone is at least doing their research again. Hopefully that will result in school admissions getting back to somewhere near where they were before the crisis started.