How Many Clicks to Inquire? New 2025 Data from 1,200+ College Websites
You've just completed cycle prep tasks, including updates to your inquiry form. New entry term prompts are active, and your team has settled on refreshed language for your form questions.
But have you ever had a nagging feeling that it's more difficult than it should be for prospective students to find the inquiry form on your website?
Benchmarking Inquiry Form Click Depth
You've clicked around on your own site and those of a few peer schools, but if you ever wished you had hard data to back up your argument that your inquiry form should be more prominent, we're here to help.
Between mid-August and mid-September 2025, Predicate Higher Ed conducted an analysis of just over 1200 college websites (including 750+ Slate schools) in order to establish benchmarking metrics you can use to understand how your inquiry form compares to those of similar institutions across the U.S.
We're sharing the findings in a series of articles. In today's post, we're drilling down into how many clicks it takes for someone to get from homepage to inquiry form.
This metric, known as click depth, is a critical performance indicator for college website optimization. A high click depth can be a significant barrier in the student recruitment funnel, potentially causing you to lose interested prospects before they ever have a chance to connect.
RFI Click Depth Across All Institutions
Methodology
This analysis is based on a list of 1,203 U.S. institutions (50 states and DC) compiled from the 2023 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data center, provided by the National Center for Education Statistics. To facilitate peer comparisons, institutions were grouped using the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education®.
Source: Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education®, American Council on Education. carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu
Of the 1,203 institutions on our list, we were able to identify active inquiry forms for 1,146 schools.
Five institutions from the 2023 IPEDS data indicated they were either closed by 2025 or in the process of closing and no longer collecting inquiries.
For the remaining 52 institutions, we were not able to identify an inquiry form. In most cases, these schools simply listed an email or phone contact for students wishing to request more information, or provided a direct application.
Averages by Carnegie Classification
First, let's examine the average click depth across nine distinct Carnegie Classifications. The charts below are grouped by institutional degree level to facilitate easier comparison among direct peers.
Doctoral: Very High Research institutions have the highest average click depth at 2.27 clicks, illustrating the friction is highest for prospective students who would like to demonstrate interest at R1s.
In contrast, Baccalaureate and Master's institutions had click depths consistently averaging around 1.4 to 1.6 clicks.
While the averages are helpful, it's worth noting that 194 institutions, 17% of those where we were able to identify an inquiry form, placed it at a click depth of 3 or more, and 12 in total placed it a depth of 5 or more.
Slate Inquiry Form Click Depth
What happens when you limit the results to Slate schools?
We identified whether the RFI for a given institution was a Slate form by using browser developer tools to inspect the embedded or linked form, then filtered the list down to schools where the form was hosted by Slate (note: for purposes of this analysis, we set aside schools where the most prominent inquiry form was provided by a third-party tool like Halda, even if there was evidence that the school uses Slate. More on that practice in future posts.)
Click Depth Distributions by Carnegie Classification (Slate Schools)
While averages provide a useful single benchmark, analyzing the distribution of click depths reveals the variety of practices for Slate schools of the same institution type.
Do certain types of institutions overwhelming place inquiry forms 0-1 clicks from their homepage, or is it more common to see 2, 3, or 4+ clicks for some types? The charts below break down what percentage of Slate institutions fall into each click-depth bucket, along with the raw numbers falling into each bucket.
How Do You Compare? Find your institution classification and the number of clicks it takes you to get from the homepage to your inquiry form. For example, if you work at a Baccalaureate: Arts & Sciences institution and know that it takes 3 clicks to get to the inquiry form from your homepage, then 84% of your peer institutions make it easier for prospects to reach their inquiry forms than your institution.
Why 0 or 1? Out of 778 Slate schools, only 11 had the form embedded directly on the homepage, requiring 0 clicks, but 367 did have a direct link, like a 'Request Info' button; in terms of friction, we consider these to be equally easy to access.
Distribution by Size & Selectivity
Another way to visualize the differences in click depth practices is by size and selectivity, again drawing on IPEDS data for total enrollment as of 2023 and calculating admit rates as 2023 Admits / 2023 Applicants.
When divided into four groups based on selectivity—those admitting less than 25%, 25-50%, 50-75%, or more than 75%—and by enrollment—those with fewer than 2500 students, 2500-7500, 7500-20000, and more than 20000—we can see the following:
Small, moderately selectively institutions offer the least friction, with more than 75% in the 0-1 click category. By contrast, at the largest and most selective institutions, a third of inquiry forms were 4+ clicks away.
Conclusion: Every Click Counts
Institutional websites serve many difficult audiences, from prospective students and their families to alumni, current students, faculty and staff, members of the media, local communities, and more. A button on the homepage is prime real estate, and with many stakeholders vying for that space, it can be a challenge to argue that the inquiry form should be more prominent. Without it, though, prospective students may be encountering more friction on your site than on those of the other schools on their list. When someone is ready to raise their hand and inquire, the process should be smooth and intuitive.
We hope that by providing this benchmarking data, marketing and enrollment teams will better understand how their practices compare to their peers, and, where there's a gap, give you the evidence you need to advocate for making your inquiry form more accessible.
Interested in benchmarking your form in more detail against your closest peer institutions? Contact us at info@predicatehighered.com for more about custom reports we can prepare for your school.
