The profile is what a prospective family sees before they decide whether to inquire. Get it right and it earns you inquiries from the traffic you already have; get it wrong and no amount of extra traffic to your page will compensate.
This article walks through the 15-item profile completion checklist, the calls that actually matter (fees, photos, head-of- school bio), and the tier-specific advice on where to spend your optimization time.
The 15-item completion checklist
The profile completion widget on your dashboard tracks 15 items across three tiers. All items are equally weighted; "complete" means all 15 ticked.
Bronze tier (basics) — items 1-5
These are the floor. If any of these are missing, your profile doesn't even read as legitimate:
- School name — autofilled, always complete
- Logo uploaded — square, 512×512 minimum, transparent background ideal
- Description — more than 50 characters, but 200-400 is the sweet spot
- Contact email — what families use when they message you
- Contact phone — must be valid international format
If any of these is missing, your profile looks abandoned. Schools sometimes upload the logo and assume the rest is "done later" — don't. Finish bronze in the first sitting.
Silver tier (content) — items 6-10
These are what makes the profile useful to a family:
- At least 1 program — IB, Swiss Matura, A-Levels, etc. Programs are what makes you appear in filtered searches.
- At least 3 photos — three is the floor; the actual sweet spot is 10-15.
- Hero image set — the full-bleed photo at the top of your profile. The single most important visual on your page.
- Website URL — your school's main website. Families verify you're a real institution by clicking through.
- Education levels — the stages you teach (pre-school, primary, secondary, and so on).
Gold tier (details) — items 11-15
These move you from "real school" to "school worth seriously considering":
- Tuition range — fee minimum + maximum; only a full range ticks this item. See the fee section below for the trade-off.
- Founding year — the year your school was founded.
- Languages — the languages you teach in. Families filter the directory by language, so a school with none set doesn't appear when they do.
- At least 1 facility — library, sports hall, science labs, boarding house and so on.
- Admissions information — any one of: the full online application switched on, a list of admission requirements, or a description of your admission process.
Work top to bottom. The directory counts every item the same, but families don't: schools that fill gold-tier items before completing bronze + silver waste effort — a family won't care about your facilities list if your description is empty.
How the directory orders schools
The directory's default order puts schools in four levels by how many of the 15 items they have: 12 or more is level 1, 9-11 is level 2, 6-8 is level 3, fewer is level 4. Inside a level the order changes every day, and when a family types a search, the closest text matches come first and levels only break ties. Your plan is not an input, and neither are reviews, activity or how recently you updated the page. The only paid way to be seen first is a Boost — a separate ad labelled "Ad" above the results, bought by the week from your dashboard and shown only to families whose search you already match, which never changes the list below. A Boost can also put your school in the paid section of the home page, in the large card or a smaller one; see How we order schools.
The fee disclosure trade-off
Item 11 (tuition range) is the most-debated. Three options:
| | Disclose full range | "From CHF X" | Don't disclose | |---|---|---|---| | Inquiry volume | Highest | Medium | Lowest | | Qualification | Mixed | Better | Best | | Time-to-tour | Slowest | Medium | Fastest | | Operational load | Highest | Medium | Lowest |
There's no objectively right answer. Two patterns:
- Day schools + smaller boarding schools (CHF 30k–50k/yr): full disclosure usually wins. The fee range isn't shocking; the conversion uplift from being upfront beats the price-shoppers filtering out.
- High-end boarding schools (CHF 80k+/yr): "from CHF X" or on-request is the norm. The fee itself selects the audience, and reducing inquiry volume to the qualified subset saves significant admissions-team time.
What's NOT acceptable: leaving the field blank. Blank reads as "we don't have our act together," not as "we don't disclose strategically." Either disclose, or set it explicitly to "on request" so families see a deliberate choice.
Photo strategy
The platform allows 15 photos on Pro and 75 on Premium. The quality bar matters more than the count:
The hero (single most important visual)
The hero photo appears at the top of your profile and in every search-result card showing your school. It's the visual that families either pause on or scroll past.
What works:
- Campus shot in good light (golden hour, mid-morning sun)
- Students engaged in activity — class, debate, sports, music — not a posed group photo
- Architecture that telegraphs the school's character (historic manor, modern campus, mountain setting)
- A specific moment, not a stock-photo aesthetic
What doesn't:
- Smiling students looking at a laptop
- A logo on a beige background
- An aerial shot so far out you can't tell what the place is
- Anything that could appear on any school's website without changing meaning
The gallery
Below the hero, the gallery shows 10-15 photos that flesh out the school. The composition matters:
- 1-2 classroom shots — show that learning happens
- 1-2 boarding/common-room shots if you're a boarding school
- 1-2 outdoor / campus shots — grounds, sports fields, surroundings
- 1 dining hall — families care about this surprisingly often
- 1 library or study space
- 1-2 specialty facilities — your strongest selling points (theatre, art studio, science labs, climbing wall)
- 1 head of school / admissions team portrait — humanizes the inquiry experience
Photo categories
Each photo has a category (campus, facilities, students, events, other). Use them — the public profile groups photos by category on devices that benefit from grouping. Misusing categories (everything tagged "other") flattens the visual experience.
Trust badges
The platform shows up to 5 trust badges on your profile, all data-earned, not tier-bought:
- Verified — we've manually confirmed school identity (paperwork, real campus, accredited)
- Responsive — you reply to at least 80% of family inquiries, averaging under 48 hours, measured over your last 90 days (minimum 5 inquiries)
- Active — your profile has been updated in the past 30 days
- Complete profile — all 15 items on the checklist filled
- Recommended — >75% of post-tour feedback responses say "would recommend"
You can toggle which badges show in Profile → Trust badges. Defaults to showing whichever you've earned. The "complete profile" badge auto-shows when items 1-15 are all done — no manual action needed.
Worth knowing: the badges are the strongest social-proof element on the profile, because a family can read all five at a glance without taking your word for anything. The work of earning them (filling everything in, replying fast, asking for feedback) is the work of being a good school operationally — the badges are the reward, not the goal.
Reviews (if enabled)
Reviews collected from post-tour feedback display on your public profile once you have some.
The display is read-only verbatim from the tour-feedback collection. You don't curate or moderate which reviews show.
Should you enable reviews?
- If you consistently get 4-5 star feedback: yes, enable. Social proof from real families beats marketing copy.
- If feedback is mixed: wait until you've fixed the underlying issues. A profile showing a couple of lukewarm 3-star reviews is worse than no reviews displayed.
- If you have low review volume (<5 over the past 6 months): wait until you have a critical mass. A profile showing one review reads as gimmicky.
What changes by tier
The profile-edit surface is the same on every tier (above Free). What differs is what families can DO from your profile:
- Free tier: profile is read-only listed in the directory. Inquiries land in our admin queue, not your inbox. The "Get in touch" CTA is the only conversion path.
- Pro tier: inquiry inbox is yours. The CTA becomes "Inquire" (routes to a form you can customize). No tour booking button.
- Premium tier: all CTAs available — Inquire, Book a tour, Apply. The booking button is what mostly determines tour-show rate; the apply button drives application start counts.
If you're on Pro and seeing strong inquiry volume but low conversion-to-tour, the friction is likely that families have to inquire → wait for a reply → schedule a tour by email. Upgrading to Premium for the self-service booking widget often pays for itself in a single admissions cycle.
Common mistakes
- Treating the description as marketing copy. "Excellence in education for the leaders of tomorrow" tells families nothing. Replace with: "180 students across Years 7-13, 60 boarders from 22 countries, IB and Swiss Matura tracks, mountain campus in Valais."
- Setting it and forgetting it. The "Active" badge requires monthly updates. Even small ones — a new photo, an updated head-of-school bio — count. Updating doesn't move you in the directory, though: your level depends only on how many of the 15 items are complete.
- Photo grid that all look the same. Six interior classroom shots aren't six photos — they're one photo six times. Mix spaces, people, activities, scales.
- Ignoring the head-of-school field. This is one of the most- clicked elements on the profile. Families want to know "who runs this place." Fill in the name, role, and bio.
- Skipping the Learning Support field. Families with neurodiverse children explicitly filter for this. Empty = invisible to them. Even "We do not currently offer learning support" is better than blank — it's an honest filter.
A simple iteration loop
Don't treat the profile as a one-and-done. The 15-item completion is the floor. Above that, treat the profile as a living artifact:
- Monthly: check the Active badge. Make at least one update — even a photo swap.
- Quarterly: review the description. Has anything changed about the school in the past 90 days that should be reflected? New program, new staff, new accreditation, new facility?
- After each open-house cycle: add 1-3 new photos from the event. Recent photos show families an active school.
- Annually: rewrite the description from scratch. Reading your own description with fresh eyes catches drift you wouldn't spot incrementally.
Where to invest first
If you're at 0% complete, start at item 1 and work down — no strategy needed.
If you're at 8-10/15, the highest-leverage items are usually:
- Hero image if it's a default or weak
- Fees (any disclosure beats blank)
- Head of school bio (not one of the 15 items, but it humanizes more than any other field)
- At least 2 more photos if you're below 10 gallery photos
Each of those is worth doing on its own. Done together they change what a family sees in the first ten seconds on your page — which is the whole decision.
When to escalate to us
Email admin@swissprivate-schools.ch if:
- You want a profile review — we'll walk through it with you and give specific feedback, free of charge
- Your listing seems to sit in the wrong place in the directory — we'll check which of the 15 items it is missing and which level that puts it in (your position inside a level changes every day by design)
- You want to verify your school for the Verified badge — submit accreditation paperwork and we'll review within 5 business days
- The Photo gallery is misbehaving (uploads failing, ordering weird) — we'll debug
We respond within 2 business days.