The weekly class builds loyalty, but it is the holiday camps that bring in the money — and they fill up four weeks ahead.
Several disciplines under one roof, camps every school holiday, an end-of-year show, and birthday parties at the weekend.
Aerial, juggling, acrobatics, balance. Every workshop has its instructor, its capacity and its kit — you don't put fifteen children on two silks.
Five mornings, limited places, bookable a month ahead. It is the format that fills the quiet weeks and brings new families into the school.
Rehearsals, ticketing, seating. An event that involves the whole school and has to be planned like one.
A Saturday afternoon sold to one family is worth several classes. As long as it can be booked without a string of messages.
The disciplines, by age and ability
Holiday camps
The end-of-year show
Birthday parties and private hire
The searches come from parents: "circus school" plus the town, "children's circus camp", "trapeze classes".
Circus appeals to families looking for something other than football or dance. Spelling out what a child actually learns, discipline by discipline, convinces far better than talk of personal growth.
Publish the camp calendar as soon as the dates are set: it is the most visited page on a school like yours.
Air travel requires qualified supervision and equipment control: it is not an ordinary leisure activity.
Le contrôle d'honorabilité s'applique à tous les intervenants auprès de mineurs.
The show raises questions of image rights and sometimes public safety: the agreement of families is obtained upon registration.
A parent discovering circus does not know your vocabulary. They want to know what their child will actually do, under what conditions, and with whom. So your site has to translate the circus arts into concrete movements, not promises of self-fulfilment. A precise description of each workshop does more for sign-ups than a fine slogan.
Aerial silks, trapeze, juggling and balance do not attract the same families. Give each technique its own page, with the equipment used, how far it can be taken and what to wear. Google then understands that your school covers several practices, and each page can rank on its own search. That is also what separates a circus school's site from an online brochure.
This is the point families examine most closely. A professional teaching for payment holds a qualification or a professional licence, and the background check applies to anyone working with under-18s. Say so on the site, along with the medical certificate and the insurance you ask for at sign-up. Many instructors come from the performing world: if your artists have toured, taught or created work, tell that story in three lines. A professional arts background reassures far more than an "our team" page with no names.
The searches are short and local: the name of the activity, the town, sometimes the child's age. People type "circus classes age 6", "children's circus holiday course" or "trapeze for beginners". These are local-intent searches, decided in a few minutes. So your home page has to name your towns and your session times, rather than hiding them in a PDF.
Some of the traffic is not for you. People looking for a higher circus arts school are after professional training, a national school, sometimes a company with an international reputation. Make clear very quickly that you offer amateur practice, leisure and discovery, for children and adults alike. If you also put on contemporary circus projects, give them a separate page: the two audiences are not reading for the same thing.
Most schools lose families not on their teaching but on their information. A site that forces people to phone up to find out a class time filters out the busiest parents. They are often the ones who would have paid for a whole holiday course.
The right journey has three steps: understand, pick a slot, pay. With a booking system built into the site, every workshop shows its capacity and the places left. Families book around the clock, including on a Sunday evening, when the decisions get made. Payment at the time of booking through Stripe closes the matter with no chasing.
Behind it, the connected schedule keeps your sessions, your rooms and your instructors up to date in real time. The waiting list fills on its own when a workshop is full, and automatic reminders cut absences. It is the same logic as for a dance school or a gymnastics club: fewer messages, more places sold.
We build a bespoke website, designed and search-optimised for your activity. The content is created with you, discipline by discipline, so that every page serves a real search. You get a site of your own, not a template with the word "yoga" swapped for the word "circus".
The website comes with everything else: an online schedule, booking with limited places, a waiting list, reminders, Stripe payments, automated confirmation emails and campaigns to the families on your books. You also get bespoke software and an iOS and Android mobile app under your own brand. The Saturday-morning admin disappears.
The simplest thing is to talk it through with your real session times in front of you. You can talk to an expert or start your free 14-day trial, with no card details.
Yes, as a limited-capacity service covering several sessions, paid in one go.
As a limited-capacity service, with or without assigned seating, paid online.
Yes, with the duration, the instructor and the number of children, paid at booking.
Yes, as a document in the registration file, with explicit consent.
Reckon on one page per discipline, a taster page, a holiday courses page, a staff page and a sign-up page. That is the minimum to cover what families search for. Six precise pages are better than a single page trying to say everything.
No, because a post does not turn up in a Google search a few months later. Social media keeps your community going; the site brings in new families. If you already have a site, a booking widget lets you add booking to it without rebuilding it.
Booking switches to a waiting list. As soon as a place comes free, everyone on the list is notified automatically and the first to pay takes the slot. You no longer have to keep a notebook alongside.
With an email campaign sent to your members as soon as the dates go live. Emails and campaigns go out from the same database as your sign-ups, so there is no export and no copy-and-paste. That is why holiday courses fill several weeks before the holidays.