We are now in a peak time for students visiting the site for advice and support. In the past two weeks since exams started it's really positive to see an increase in new users across all core year groups.

Figures for 15^th May – 24^th May

What's new...

Testing new lead generation for prospectus in registration process

You told us: You want to expand the opportunities available to generate high-quality leads  

We listened: We are currently testing the addition of lead generation functionality into our registration process. This enables users to request prospectuses from universities whilst registering on The Student Room.

What this will deliver: On average over 6,000 students per month are requesting a prospectus when registering with us. For those of you with lead generation forms set up with us this is great news, driving more leads to you. If you don’t have this enabled with us, get in touch to discuss how we can set this up.

Coming soon – based on client feedback we received during the trial we will be adding subject to the form fields.

We value your feedback while we are in this testing phase, so please do let us know how we can improve this process.

Data capture for new and existing registrants

You told us: You wanted improved audience segmentation

We listened: For new students signing up for an account we are collecting more data points upon registration. We’re also encouraging existing members to review and update their details so we can better help them with their university and pathway choices.

Data points collected include:

- Current study level
- Subjects they are currently studying and predicted grades
- When they are applying to University
- What subjects they are interested in
- What universities they are interested in Postcode and gender

With exams underway, in the last 30 days we have had 63,000+ registrations on The Student Room and The Uni Guide with these additional data points being collected. A huge 205% increase year on year.

What this will deliver: This improves the user experience by ensuring we provide students with information relevant to their preferences as well as giving clients a better profile of the audience they can target.

New search functionality

What students told us: Search on The Student Room was poor in terms of design, relevant matches showing too many discussions, and not enough of our expert articles and Uni Guide content.

We listened:  A new search function is now live for our users. Providing a higher match quality and faster speed, the new search functionality delivers both on relevancy and recency for the user. It also shows a much wider range of content from across The Student Room’s platforms. 

In addition to displaying ‘Discussions’ in the search, results also show:

• Articles - from both The Student Room and The Uni Guide
• Universities - from The Uni Guide
• Courses - from The Uni Guide
• Sponsored universities – including lead gen CTA buttons from The Uni Guide

What this will deliver: Ultimately this will provide students with an improved user experience. However the changes also bring a number of benefits for clients including:

• More lead generation opportunities - clients with lead gen buttons are now featured in a Sponsored Universities panel
• Greater visibility for paid content - sponsored content is now boosted in search results and featured in a Sponsored article panel
• Enhanced touchpoints with students - UPP Unlimited clients will have their university and course pages boosted in search results, driving traffic to your opportunities 

This latest development brings a unified search to The Student Room, meaning all the authoritative and authentic content across both The Student Room and The Uni Guide sites can now be easily accessed from one single point. To unite the two sites further, you will also notice we have adapted The Uni Guide logo to reflect this connection. This is just the first step to some bigger and exciting changes we can't wait to share with you later in the year! #watchthisspace #transformation