University Compare

Idea

Introduction

University Compare displays university statistics, student reviews and personalised choices to help students decide which course to choose when applying to university. Our service helps sixth-formers make a better-informed decision through a suite of tools before entering into Higher Education.

We work with many universities, ranging from Russell Group (top 15 universities) to University Alliance (universities typically ranked 50+).

We are comfortably generating a six-figure incoming revenue. We aim to be cash flow positive in the next 6 months.

We will shortly release our brand new app: https://universitycompare.com/download/app/

Intended impact

Many students today are unsure of the benefits of applying to university and are not aware of the opportunities available for them. Many students have consistently struggled to find external support outside of their school, and University Compare addresses this problem.

The government's Browne review considered the balance of contributions to universities by taxpayers, students, graduates, and employers, with the result being that student fees should be increased to £9k per annum (+/- U.K. inflation rate), and government contributions direct to universities have reduced dramatically.

Universities are now under greater financial pressure to fill places to cover their costs, and this is creating a more competitive marketplace.

We're able to offer a realistic perspective on the university experience. University Compare specialises in gaining reviews from former and current students who share their experiences online; they give a great insight into university life, similar to the reviews on TripAdvisor.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Year 2014:
- University sales committed to the site
- Teacher interest grows to 6,500+ subscribers
- Focus groups held in multiple schools
- Best Newcomer 2014 by Education Investor

Year 2015:
- Higher Education sales and site traffic double since 2014
- Disruptive technology; Clearing App introduced on App stores
- Major press; including Sky News & BBC broadcasts University Compare

Year 2016:
- Site traffic double from 2015
- 25% of the Clearing market use our app to search for a Clearing Course
- Our service reaches 26M UK App store impressions
- Users grow to over 36,000 by December 2016
- Increased site rank, with an est 60% increase in referring domains
- Featured in; Metro, Telegraph, Independent, Huffington Post and more

Year 2017:
- Traffic increases to 100,000+ hits in July, October, and November
- Social following increases from 2,227 (Nov 2016) to 193,146 (Dec 2017) (Student Feed UK Facebook page added)
- Surpassed our revenue target by 132%
- Custom technological infrastructure built for uni budgets
- Custom user data-tracking allowing in-depth student insights
- Head of Apple App Store UK meets Owen O'Neill to discuss App
- Working with Apple for their feedback to help design an outstanding product that helps students
- Increased site rank (SEO) to 1.5M

Monetisation strategy

Current revenue streams:

- Annual Subscription (featured university listing) for universities.
- Annual Subscription (featured course listing) for universities.
- Social advertising for universities/companies.
- Email advertising campaigns for universities/companies.
- Cost per referral in Clearing, £50 per connected lead.
- Data CPA's for student-related companies, i.e. marketing to our users to encourage registrations elsewhere.

Additional revenue streams we plan to implement in 2018:

- University open day bookings £50 per connection.
- App-based marketing, features and referrals, custom quotes.
- European agency recruitment, helping EU students into UK universities

We have hit our previously projected revenue targets outlined in our previous funding round held by Seedrs, showcasing realistic and scalable targets. We moved sales resources to focus on user growth in 2017, growing to 75,000 registered users, instead of our forecasted 16,000 total users. We see growing the user base and increasing customer engagement as a stronger long-term strategy to increase our market share.

Use of proceeds

The company has stayed extremely lean over the past 12 months, our average monthly cost at £15,750 PCM. This includes 4 full-time staff, consultants/freelancers, product development and a marketing/advertising budget. The company has no outstanding debts/loans.

Estimated costs for year 1:
£113,000 Salaries (Incl. NI/Tax).
£40,500 Product development.
£206,750 Marketing.
£17,800 G&A.

£378,050 = Total spend

Estimated costs for year 2:
£203,000 Salaries (Incl. NI/Tax).
£53,625 Product development.
£171,250 Marketing.
£25,500 G&A.

£453,375 = Total spend

Note: The marketing budgets supplied above are a maximum spend and will scale proportionately to the sales generated.

Upon reaching our goal, within 2 years we can continue to build the core business, continuing our successful entry into the UK undergraduate market along with a small EU market share; students looking to study outside of the UK.

Any additional employees will be placed predominately into sale-based roles and any changes in salary will be performance based only.