Strictly’s Rose Led to Spike in BSL Course Sign Ups
The day after Rose Ayling-Ellis’ appearance on Strictly Come Dancing, the British Sign Language (BSL) Courses website reportedly saw a 2,844% increase in signups for their pay what you can training programmes.
Seeing a well-known actress, who is deaf, using sign language on prime-time television made a welcome change. Even the Strictly host, judges, and professional dancers had clearly been learning basic sign to communicate respectfully with the actress on set. Together with their incredibly moving “10 seconds of silence” that features in their Couple’s Choice dance, these actions no doubt inspired others to recognise the importance of learning British Sign Language.
But this isn’t the only time that the BSL Courses website has seen a surge of interest. The first lockdown led to an increase in BSL course sign-ups, as did the subsequent ones. As people looked for something valuable to do with their additional free time at home, language learning skyrocketed.
‘Simon from british-sign.co.uk has held an account with Nochex for a number of years and he commented “I have found Nochex to be extremely supportive, especially when the number of sign ups on my website increased significantly and they assisted me in managing the huge demand for BSL during the lockdown periods”‘
Preparing for the next potential lockdown, it got us thinking about what businesses can do to prepare for unexpected peaks in interest. As such, we’ve highlighted our top tips below:
How to Prepare for Unexpected Traffic
Offer Quick & Easy Payment Methods – Surges in new traffic could bring a variety of new audiences to your site. Make sure you can cater to them all by providing a range of payment options with quick and easy checkout processes, like Nochex. If your checkout process is clunky or difficult, audiences that have had no previous connection to your brand are unlikely to persist through to conversion. Make it clear on site how quick and easy it is to transact in a few clicks.
Plan for the Unexpected – In a post-covid world, you can expect anything. Ensure your development and marketing plans consider your needs should you unexpectedly find an increase in demand or website traffic from an engaged audience. Do you have content that will help them move through the customer journey to conversion? Map out all the potential questions that customers could have and make sure you are answering them onsite to encourage conversion.
Anticipate Potential Triggers – Have you considered triggers or events that could lead to potential peaks in traffic? If you are a site like BSL, you can anticipate when actresses like Rose will appear on TV again and be ready for peaks in interest. If you are a charity and you know that there will be an awareness day for a condition or significant press interest around the topic, you can map out all the potential triggers and be on hand when engagement peaks.
If you are interested in learning British Sign Language, you can sign up for an online course and pay securely with Nochex, here.