For years, much of digital enrollment marketing focused on visibility: Can students find us? That question drove everything from SEO strategies and advertising budgets to website analytics dashboards and lead-generation goals.
Today, AI is making it easier for prospective students to find information. But finding information and trusting it are two different things.
Summer melt gets a lot of attention, but not every lost student melts away after making a commitment. In many cases, students begin losing confidence months earlier as they research programs, compare costs, evaluate outcomes, and decide whether they can see themselves at an institution. By the time they apply, deposit, or enroll, the yield leak may already be underway.
More Information Doesn’t Always Reduce Uncertainty
College websites are no longer the starting point for many prospective students. Many arrive after researching programs, costs, and outcomes elsewhere.
That’s where seemingly small website issues can become bigger obstacles. A missing detail, an unanswered question, or a confusing next step can create friction at a critical moment. Even minor frustrations can chip away at confidence.
Over time, those friction points can become yield leaks. Students keep searching, delay decisions, or turn their attention elsewhere. They can begin losing confidence well before they apply or submit a deposit.
The seven yield leaks are among the most common we see across higher education websites. Use them to find where prospective students may be losing confidence before they take the next step.
Yield Leak #1: Would I Fit In Here?
Most enrollment and marketing teams can clearly describe what makes their institution unique. Prospective students are trying to answer a simpler question: Would I fit in here?
The question matters. Students who feel a sense of belonging are more likely to engage, persist, and succeed.[i] It starts during the earliest interactions with an institution, including the experience of exploring its website.
What Students Are Trying to Understand
- Would I fit in here?
- Would I like it here?
- Are people here like me?
Common Friction Points
- Generic student-life content
- Overly polished marketing language
- Lack of authentic student voices
How to Stop the Leak
- Consider the students you most want to serve. Can they easily find stories, examples, and evidence that people like them succeed at your institution?
- Audit photography and student examples for representation across key student audiences.
- Create dedicated content for key audiences such as first-generation students, transfer students, adult learners, and military-connected students.
Yield Leak #2: Can I Afford This?
Cost questions usually show up early. Sallie Mae and Ipsos found that 79% of undergraduate families eliminated at least one school based on cost alone. Yet among families who received a financial aid offer, only 27% said it clearly outlined their expected out-of-pocket cost.[ii]
Families may not need a perfect estimate on the first visit. They need enough detail to decide whether you’re worth considering. That can be harder than it should be. Tuition, fees, scholarships, grants, housing, meal plans and other out-of-pocket costs often live in different places.
A student may find the sticker price before they find the aid that changes it. A parent may find a net price calculator but leave unsure what the number means.
In a decision this personal and expensive, confusion can quickly turn into doubt.
What Students Are Trying to Understand
- Can I afford this?
- How much am I actually going to pay?
- Am I going to end up with a ton of debt?
Common Friction Points
- Tuition information spread across multiple pages
- Financial aid terminology without definitions
- Hidden fees
How to Stop the Leak
- Ensure tuition, aid, and scholarship information is no more than a click or two away from admissions and program pages.
- Replace financial-aid jargon with plain language, or add tooltips with definitions.
- Monitor tuition- and aid-related internal search queries to inform content updates.
Yield Leak #3: Will This Degree Pay Off?
Students increasingly want to understand where a degree can lead. Career outcomes, internships, graduate school placement, and return on investment all play a role in enrollment decisions.
One recent survey found that 62% of students and recent graduates want more career preparation or career-focused courses.[iii]
Institutions often have strong outcomes stories to tell, but those stories aren’t always easy to find. Employment rates may be buried in annual reports. Internship opportunities may live on a separate career services website. Graduate school outcomes may not appear on program pages at all.
When students must work to find evidence of success, confidence suffers.
What Students Are Trying to Understand
- Is this degree worth it?
- What can I do with it?
- Will I be able to get a good job?
Common Friction Points
- Missing outcomes data
- Vague career claims
- Weak employer connections
- Lack of alumni examples
How to Stop the Leak
- Show where real graduates work and what they do.
- Connect programs to real-life careers and job stats, not just coursework.
- Include employer names, internship opportunities, and graduate outcomes where available.
Yield Leak #4: Why Choose This College?
Many institutions have compelling strengths. But those strengths are often presented in ways that could describe dozens of other colleges and universities.
Differentiation often requires tradeoffs. A college that prioritizes close faculty mentorship may feel different from one built around large-scale research. A university focused on flexible pathways may appeal to a different student than one centered on a traditional residential experience.
Those nuances help prospective students understand what they are choosing and what they are not.
What Students Are Trying to Understand
- Why should I choose this school?
- What makes this different from the others I’m considering?
- What would I get here that I wouldn’t get somewhere else?
Common Friction Points
- Generic messaging
- Similar program descriptions
- Unsupported differentiators
- Overreliance on rankings
How to Stop the Leak
- Gather survey data from enrolled and non-enrolled students about decision drivers and make sure they are featured in your content.
- Compare your homepage and top program pages against key competitors and note the similarities.
- Replace generic statements with specific examples and proof points from real students and alumni.
Yield Leak #5: How Does This Work for Me?
Transfer students want to know whether their credits will count. Adult learners want to understand flexibility. Graduate students have different priorities than first-year applicants.
When information for these audiences is fragmented or difficult to find, students may be left wondering whether the school can meet their needs.
What Students Are Trying to Understand
- Will my credits count?
- Can I do this while I’m working?
- Will my professors be flexible?
- Am I too old to fit in?
Common Friction Points
- Fragmented transfer information
- Unclear admissions pathways
- Missing audience-specific content
How to Stop the Leak
- Monitor internal searches related to transfer credits, flexibility, scheduling, and admissions requirements. Use the findings to strengthen user paths to key content.
- Audit transfer, adult learner, and graduate admissions pages for audience-specific next steps, deadlines, and contacts.
- Review audience-specific admissions inquiries for recurring themes and create corresponding FAQs.
Yield Leak #6: Can I Trust What I’m Reading?
Prospective students are exposed to marketing messages everywhere. They don’t just want claims about career preparation, student success, or academic excellence. They want evidence.
The next generation of college-bound students is growing up with an even sharper filter for trust. Digital Voices found that 49% of Gen Alpha children trust influencer recommendations as much as recommendations from family and friends.[iv]
For colleges and universities, that shift raises the burden of proof. Broad claims need visible support.
Students need more than a promise of academic excellence and student success. They need outcomes data, student stories, employer partnerships, and real examples that help them decide what to believe.
What Students Are Trying to Understand
- Is this actually true?
- Are they just marketing to me?
- What proof do they have?
Common Friction Points
- Unsupported outcomes claims
- Outdated statistics
- Lack of real-life student examples
How to Stop the Leak
- Audit key enrollment pages for claims that lack supporting evidence.
- Monitor visits to outcomes, accreditation, rankings, and employer partnership content.
- Update statistics, outcomes data, or examples that are more than a few years old.
Yield Leak #7: What Should I Do Next?
Every enrollment professional has seen this happen: a prospective student spends time exploring programs, tuition, and admissions information, then leaves without taking any action. Often the issue isn’t missing information. It’s a missing next step.
Campus visits show why this matters. By the time a student is ready to visit, they have usually already formed an impression of the institution. The visit gives them a chance to see whether that impression holds up. A “Visit” link may not be enough. Students need clear options, dates, times, formats, and expectations before they commit to the next step.
When websites don’t clearly guide students toward visiting, applying, requesting information, or connecting with admissions, momentum can stall.
What Students Are Trying to Understand
- Should I visit?
- Should I apply?
- Should I talk to someone?
- What’s my next step?
Common Friction Points
- Dead-end pages
- Weak calls to action
- Too many competing options
- Unclear pathways
How to Stop the Leak
- Review high-traffic pages for clear next-step calls to action. Identify pages with high exits and no obvious conversion path.
- Add a one-question intercept survey to your website to better understand user needs.
- Monitor inquiry starts, inquiry completions, and application starts by page.
Start With One Leak
College decisions already come with anxiety. Yield leaks amplify uncertainty that already exists. Not every yield leak ends with a student choosing another institution. Some end with a student postponing the decision altogether. Neither outcome is ideal.
Start with one yield leak. Identify where students are getting stuck, make a targeted improvement, and measure the impact. Even small fixes can have an outsized effect when they remove friction from a high-stakes decision.
As AI, search, social media, and peer conversations shape more of the early college search, your website still plays a critical role. It helps students confirm what they have learned, understand whether you fit their needs, and decide whether to take the next step.
That is where enrollment momentum is built. One answered question at a time.
[i] Paskill. (2025, November 25). New research launch: Understanding belonging in higher education. https://paskill.agency/latest/insights/new-research-launch-understanding-belonging-in-higher-education/
[ii] Sallie Mae & Ipsos. How America Pays for College 2025. Sallie Mae, 2025. https://www.salliemae.com/content/dam/slm/writtencontent/Research/HAP_2025.pdf
[iii] National Society of Leadership and Success. The State of Higher Ed 2025. Survey of 3,790 students, graduates, and administrators.
[iv] Digital Voices, Next-Gen Influence: A Brand Guide to Engage Gen Alpha (2026), cited in Cecilia Carloni, “Nearly Half of Gen Alpha Trust Influencers as Much as Family on Purchases, Report Finds,” Net Influencer, May 1, 2026.
