This is the checklist we run through with schools right before they go live. Twelve items, grouped into four categories: profile completeness, operational readiness, billing, and a final smoke test.
Going through this takes about 30 minutes. Don't skip it — every item on the list has, at some point, been the reason a school's first week went badly.
Profile completeness (5 items)
These are what prospective families see. An incomplete profile means fewer inquiries and lower conversion of the inquiries you do get.
☐ 1. Hero image set and high quality
The hero is the photo at the top of your public profile page and in search results. Default is the platform-supplied generic — replace it with something specific to your school.
Quality bar: at least 1920px wide, landscape orientation, in focus, shot during daylight (golden hour is best), shows campus character (buildings, grounds, students working — not a posed group shot).
Verify: Profile tab → top of the page. Looks compelling on both mobile (preview narrow) and desktop.
☐ 2. Description filled in, 200+ words
The description appears under the hero. Three short paragraphs:
- Who you are — type of school, level, location, size
- What's distinctive — pedagogy, programs, philosophy, history
- Who fits — what kind of family will be happy here
Skip marketing language ("excellence in education", "world-class education"). Say specific things. "Our school has 180 students across Years 7-13, including 60 boarders from 22 countries" beats "We are a diverse international community."
Verify: Profile tab → Description section. Read it aloud. Does it sound like a person wrote it, or like a brochure?
☐ 3. Programs ticked
Settings → Profile → Programs. Tick every program/curriculum you offer (IB, Swiss Matura, A-Levels, IGCSE, AP, French Bac, etc.). Programs are what makes you appear in filtered searches — a family filtering for "IB" only sees IB schools, so unchecked programs make you invisible to those searches.
Verify: open your public profile in an incognito tab, find your school in a filtered search by program. You should appear.
☐ 4. Fees disclosed (or intentionally not)
We surface fees prominently on the public profile because families compare them. You have three choices:
- Disclose full fees — most inquiries, mix of qualified and not
- Disclose "from CHF X" — middle ground, signals the band
- Don't disclose — fewer inquiries, mostly serious ones
There's no wrong answer, but the default is "we don't have fees filled in yet" — that signals incompleteness, not intentionality. Either fill in the fees or explicitly mark them as "on request" so families see a deliberate choice.
Verify: Profile tab → Pricing. State is one of the three above, not blank.
☐ 5. At least 6 photos in the gallery
Hero alone isn't enough. Families scroll the gallery looking for: a classroom shot, a dorm/common room (if boarding), an outdoor space, the dining hall, students at work, and one head-of-school / admissions-team portrait.
Six is the minimum that fills the gallery grid; 10-15 is ideal. If you only have 3, the gallery looks half-built.
Verify: Profile tab → Photos. Gallery has ≥6 entries, captioned where useful.
Operational readiness (4 items)
These are what makes the inquiry/booking flow actually work after launch.
☐ 6. Notification destinations confirmed
Settings → Notification preferences. The email address receiving "new inquiry" notifications is the right one — typically a shared inbox or admissions@yourschool.ch, not the head's personal email.
Verify: Settings → Notifications. Email address is the right one for the team that handles inquiries day-to-day.
☐ 7. Inquiry form customized
Settings → Inquiry form. Default form has name/email/message. Add 1-3 custom questions specific to your school — typically "year level," "start date," and "boarding vs day." More than 3 custom questions and families abandon the form.
Verify: Open your public profile in an incognito tab, click the inquiry button, see the form. Custom questions appear and look right.
☐ 8. Tour calendar live with availability set
Settings → Bookings. At least one tour type configured. Weekly availability has at least 2 time slots per week. Send automatic reminder email toggled on (off by default — most schools want it on; it lifts show-rate from ~60% to 75-85%).
Verify: Open your public profile incognito, click "Book a tour." The booking widget appears. Available slots show for the next 2 weeks.
☐ 9. Team members invited and accepted
Settings → Team. Anyone who'll be using the dashboard daily is invited AND has accepted (status: Active, not Pending). This avoids the day-1-of-launch panic where the head sends a screenshot of an inquiry to the admissions lead via WhatsApp because the lead doesn't have an account yet.
Verify: Settings → Team. All team members show "Active" status.
Billing (1 item)
☐ 10. Billing mode + payment confirmed
Settings → Billing.
- Card billing: payment method on file, no banner showing on Overview, "Active" status on the subscription.
- Invoice billing (PO/Net-30): PO number and billing-contact email are correct, first invoice received by your finance team and either paid or scheduled-to-pay.
If anything looks wrong here, fix it before launch. Schools that go live with an unsettled billing state risk the dashboard auto-disabling features mid-September when payment fails and nobody notices because everyone's focused on incoming inquiries.
Verify: Settings → Billing. Status is "Active" or "Trialing → Active scheduled." No red banners on Overview.
Smoke test (2 items)
The last two items are end-to-end tests. They take 5 minutes and catch ~80% of "nothing's working" support tickets.
☐ 11. Send a test inquiry to yourself
Open your public profile in an incognito tab. Fill in the inquiry form with a fake family name and your own email address. Submit.
What should happen, in this order:
- The form shows a confirmation screen ("we've received your inquiry").
- You receive an auto-reply email from your school's address within 2 minutes.
- The inquiry appears in your dashboard's Inquiries tab (refresh if needed) within 5 minutes.
- The notification email lands in the inbox configured in step 6.
If any of these don't happen, find the gap before going live. Most common cause: notification email address is wrong (step 6 not done carefully).
☐ 12. Book a test tour for yourself
Same incognito tab — click "Book a tour," pick a slot 2-3 days out, fill in the form with your own details. Submit.
What should happen:
- Confirmation screen.
- Confirmation email to you (the "family") within 2 minutes.
- The booking appears in your Bookings tab.
- The reminder email arrives 24h before the slot (you can verify this by booking a slot 25h out and waiting).
After confirming, delete the test inquiry and test booking from the dashboard so your CRM and pipeline don't start with junk data.
You're live
If all 12 are checked, you're ready. Families will start finding you through search, Google, our directory pages, and any inbound traffic you drive yourself.
A note on expectations for week 1: new schools usually see 2-8 inquiries in the first week, with the first one arriving 24-72 hours after going live. If you're seeing 0 after 5 days, something's wrong with the profile (usually photos or description) — not a platform issue.
Beyond the checklist
A few things that aren't required for launch but pay off if you do them in the first month:
- Add virtual visit as a second tour type. Catches families who can't travel.
- Configure email broadcasts with one welcome email scheduled to go out to anyone who inquires. Free pipeline warming.
- Set up two reviews from current parents. Reviews boost conversion ~15% in our data.
- If you're on Premium, sketch your admissions form even if you won't open it until September. Building it in advance means you're not rushing it in admissions-season chaos.
Each of those has its own article — work through them in month 1-2, not pre-launch.
When to ask for help
Email admin@swissprivate-schools.ch with:
- "I've finished the checklist and want a 15-min review before going live" — we'll walk through it with you on a quick call
- "Item X doesn't behave the way the article describes" — bug reports help us improve the platform
- "I'm not sure if my photos/description are good enough" — we'll give honest feedback
We respond within 2 business days, usually same-day.