Wyzant Insights - Term 3, 2020

As we come to the close of 2020, there are a few words that come to mind to describe it: historic, incredible, unprecedented (as if we haven’t heard that word enough times).

Living in a moment that history won’t soon forget, we at Wyzant can’t help but be aware of the enormous challenge this presented for learners and educators alike. We have nothing but an immense amount of gratitude to tutors this year for stepping up to the challenge and helping so many students succeed in spite of tough odds and drastic changes.

Andrew Geant, Wyzant’s CEO, put it into words on the Wyzant blog: Reflecting on 2020: Gratitude & Joy

So, one more time for good measure, we’d like to express our gratitude to every tutor on Wyzant who helped someone get past that virtual learning struggle, pass that test, pick up that new quarantine hobby, or just get the support they needed so much through this momentous year.

We want to hear from you!

With an eye towards 2021 and ways we can further help tutors build their business on Wyzant, we’d love your feedback. We want to know about where you struggle the most in building your tutoring business.

Product Updates

In the past few months, we have released some important updates for tutors. We hope these updates help you reach more students and provide an even better tutoring experience.

Student ECards

This fall, we introduced a new way for you to stay connected with your students: ECards. The learning relationship you develop with your student is important and ECards give you another way to express that. They’re an effective way to keep your students engaged and invested, as well as a valuable expression that you care.

Students seem to really love them! Those who received an ECard were 25% more likely to continue having lessons with their tutor than those who did not, and significantly more likely to come back for tutoring after a prolonged break.

We have a variety of card themes available to you, such as:

• Reminder to prepare for upcoming exams
• Encouragement on achieving a goal
• Holiday greetings
• Thank you for a great lesson
• Just reaching out

Scheduling Updates

Earlier this fall we ran a test to see how students would interact with our existing “Request A Lesson” feature if we made it more prominent on the tutor profile and contact pages. We wanted to see if this would make it easier for students to clearly articulate their needs and get started with tutoring.

We didn’t end up making this change permanent, but this test was part of a larger initiative to make scheduling more intuitive for students and tutors alike, and we did learn some interesting things:

1. Overall, the test didn’t change the number of overall visitors that became new students. In the test, we saw slightly more visitors leave the site before contacting a tutor, but for those that did contact a tutor, they were more likely to convert and have a lesson with the tutor they contacted. These two changes balanced each other out.
2. 40% of students who saw the “request a lesson” feature in its more prominent spot used it to request a lesson time! These students added payment information to their account faster, exchanged fewer messages with a tutor before having their lesson, and reached out to fewer tutors via direct contact.

These results show that scheduling a lesson can help a student get started with their first lesson faster.

The good news is, tutors have the capability to do this now - by scheduling a lesson yourself or instructing your student on how to request a lesson time through messaging.

What’s next

Here are a few projects we’ve got in the works at Wyzant. We’ll share more details about each soon!

New Tools to Build your Business

We’re assessing a number of ways to help tutors thrive on Wyzant. The options range from providing additional data and insights into the best way to acquire students, to refining the tools and features at your disposal to “get out of the way” and make sure your students have the smoothest learning experience possible.

Email Verification for New Students

In order to provide a more secure experience and continue to reduce spam contacts, we are testing new student experiences that require new student sign-ups to verify their emails. We will continue to iterate on this user experience in early 2021 and will let you know once we make a permanent change.

Tutor Spotlight

Jonathan S. earned his certification in Advanced HTML5 and CSS3, and holds another in User Interface Design. He’s written and maintained webpages for years using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Jonathan specializes in tutoring college students and people enrolled in coding bootcamps for web development. To-date, Jonathan has tutored more than 1160 hours on Wyzant and maintains a 5-star rating.

As a kid, Elizabeth N. was introduced to the Spanish language by her mom, a teacher. Elizabeth’s first undergraduate degree was a B.A. in Spanish, and during her junior year abroad in Spain, she acquired near-native fluency. She’s maintained that fluency through years of work as a teacher, tutor, interpreter, assistant counselor for Latino families, as well as through many friendships with Spanish-speaking people. Elizabeth has tutored an amazing 2,289 hours on Wyzant.

Meet the Wyzant Team

Laura Rosholt, Senior Manager of Customer Operations

“In my 10 years at Wyzant, I’ve held a variety of roles through which I’ve gained invaluable skills and experiences. It’s been an amazing opportunity to grow alongside a company so invested in strengthening individuals and their communities by connecting people and making learning personalized and accessible.

In my current role, I focus on the internal and external efficacy of our customer-facing teams. A lot of my time is spent in a cross-functional capacity streamlining processes to achieve more seamless outcomes for our users. My attention is also consistently on elevating the customer voice by tying the human experience to our internal data within the broader organization. I enjoy the opportunity to learn new things every day and I value the opportunity to stay close to our users and continually better understand their needs.

When I’m not working, I’m usually running after my 2 and 5-year old, I try to squeeze in virtual barre classes, and I love epic novels (I just finished rereading The Count of Monte Cristo).”