Your school already has a page on the directory, and it has been public for a while. We built it from what your school publishes — name, location, programmes, a description drawn from your own site. Families have been able to find it, read it and compare it against other schools the whole time.
What changed when you subscribed is that it is now yours to control. You can correct anything we got wrong, add everything we couldn't source, and switch on the parts that were never on: inquiries routed to your inbox, a tour calendar families can book, your team in the dashboard.
That reframes what this checklist is for. There is no launch day to prepare for — the page is live right now, in whatever state it is in. Anything wrong on it is wrong in public. That is the reason to work through this in your first week rather than eventually.
About 30 minutes, in four passes.
Pass 1 — Correct what's already published
Start here, because these are the items where an error is currently visible to families.
☐ 1. Read your description as a stranger would
We wrote what we could from your public material. It may be thin, it may be dated, and it is definitely not in your voice.
Three short paragraphs work best:
- Who you are — type of school, level, location, size
- What's distinctive — pedagogy, programmes, philosophy, history
- Who fits — what kind of family will be happy here
Skip the brochure register ("excellence in education", "world-class learning"). Specifics beat adjectives: "180 students across Years 7–13, including 60 boarders from 22 countries" tells a family more than "a diverse international community" ever will.
Check: Profile tab → Description. Read it aloud. Does it sound like someone from your school wrote it?
☐ 2. Confirm your programmes are complete
Profile → Programmes. Tick every programme and curriculum you offer (IB, Swiss Matura, A-Levels, IGCSE, AP, French Bac, and so on).
This one is worth care: programmes drive filtered search. A family filtering for "IB" sees only schools with IB ticked, so anything we missed makes you invisible to exactly the families looking for it.
Check: open your public profile in an incognito tab and find your school through a filtered search by programme. You should appear.
☐ 3. Decide what your page says about fees
We surface fees prominently, because it is the first thing families compare. You have three positions:
- Full fees — the most inquiries, mixed in quality
- "From CHF X" — signals the band without publishing the whole schedule
- On request — fewer inquiries, mostly serious ones
Any of the three is a legitimate choice. The one to avoid is the default, which reads as "we haven't filled this in" — that looks like neglect rather than policy. Pick a position and set it deliberately.
Check: Profile tab → Pricing shows one of the three, not a blank.
☐ 4. Verify the practical details
Address, contact email, phone, website link, age range, boarding or day. These came from public sources and go stale — a wrong phone number or a dead website link on a live page costs you inquiries silently.
Check: Profile tab → click your own website link and dial your own number.
Pass 2 — Add what we couldn't
These are the things that only exist if you supply them, and they are the difference between a listing and a profile worth reading.
☐ 5. Replace the hero image
The hero is the photo at the top of your page and in search results. Until you set one, it is generic.
Quality bar: at least 1920px wide, landscape, in focus, shot in daylight, showing campus character — buildings, grounds, students at work. Not a posed group shot.
Check: Profile tab → top of page. Compelling on both mobile (preview narrow) and desktop.
☐ 6. Build the gallery to at least six photos
Families scroll looking for a classroom, a boarding house or common room, an outdoor space, the dining hall, students working, and a face from the admissions team.
Six fills the grid; ten to fifteen is better. Three makes the gallery look half-built, which is worse than a smaller gallery done well.
Check: Profile tab → Photos. At least six, captioned where a caption adds something.
☐ 7. Put people on the page
Head of school and the admissions contact, with photos and a short bio each. Families are choosing who will look after their child; a name and a face does more work here than another paragraph of prose.
Check: Profile tab → Team.
Pass 3 — Switch on what was never on
Everything above was already visible. Everything in this pass is genuinely new, and it is off until you turn it on.
☐ 8. Point inquiries at the right inbox
Account → Notifications. The address receiving "new inquiry" alerts should be a shared inbox or admissions@yourschool.ch — not the head's personal email, which is where inquiries go to be forgotten during a holiday.
Check: Account → Notifications shows the address the team that handles inquiries actually reads.
☐ 9. Shape the inquiry form
Settings → Inquiry form. The default asks name, email and message. Add one to three questions specific to your school — usually year level, intended start date, and boarding versus day. Keep it short; the form is a first conversation, not an application.
Check: open your public profile incognito, click the inquiry button, and confirm your questions appear as intended.
☐ 10. Open your tour calendar
Bookings → Settings. Switch booking on, set your weekly availability to at least a couple of slots, pick a default meeting type, and turn on Send automatic reminder email (off by default — a family who booked three weeks ago needs the nudge). While you're there, the Confirmation Email section takes a custom message that goes to every family who books.
Check: incognito, click "Book a tour". The widget appears with slots for the next two weeks.
☐ 11. Get your team into the dashboard
Settings → Team. Everyone who will use this daily should be invited and have accepted — status Active, not Pending. Otherwise the first real inquiry gets forwarded around by WhatsApp screenshot because the admissions lead has no account yet.
Check: Settings → Team. Everyone shows Active.
Pass 4 — Confirm billing, then test it end to end
☐ 12. Check the billing state
Settings → Billing.
- Card: payment method on file, no banner on Overview, subscription Active.
- Invoice (PO / Net-30): PO number and billing contact correct, first invoice received by your finance team and paid or scheduled.
Worth two minutes now, because an unsettled billing state disables features later — reliably in the middle of admissions season, when nobody is watching the billing tab.
☐ 13. Send yourself an inquiry
Incognito tab, your own public profile, fill in the inquiry form with a made-up family name and your own email address. Submit.
What should happen, in order:
- The form shows a confirmation screen.
- You receive the auto-reply within a couple of minutes.
- The inquiry appears in your Inquiries tab.
- The notification lands in the inbox you set in step 8.
If any step doesn't happen, find the gap now. The usual culprit is the notification address in step 8.
☐ 14. Book yourself a tour
Same incognito tab, "Book a tour", a slot a few days out, your own details.
What should happen: confirmation screen, confirmation email to you as the "family", and the booking in your Bookings tab. To check the reminder too, book a slot just over 24 hours out and wait for it.
Then delete the test inquiry and test booking so your CRM doesn't start life with junk in it.
After the checklist
Your page was already working. Now it is working with your photos, your fees, your voice, and inquiries arriving where someone will see them.
A few things worth doing in the first month or two, each with its own article:
- Offer video visits as well as in-person ones, for families who can't travel to Switzerland to look around.
- Set up two reviews from current parents. A profile with no reviews asks a family to take your word for it; one with reviews lets other parents make the case for you.
- On Premium, check that the Get news button on your page and the Send me news from [your school] checkbox on your forms are there (they appear automatically). Every family who says yes joins the list your news broadcasts go to.
- On Premium, sketch your admissions form before you need it. Building it in September, during the rush, is how it ends up rushed.
When to ask for help
Email admin@swissprivate-schools.ch with:
- "I've worked through this and would like a second pair of eyes on my page" — happy to go through it with you
- "Item X doesn't behave the way the article describes" — bug reports genuinely help
- "I'm not sure my photos or description are good enough" — you'll get an honest answer
We respond within two business days, usually the same day.