What to put on a tutoring site when the tutor is the product

Why is the tutor page doing more work than the service page?

Because the decision is about a person, and the site usually describes a method.

Most tutoring sites lead with an approach: a philosophy, a diagnostic, a proprietary sequence. A parent reads that and still does not know who will be sitting with their child on Tuesday. The page that answers the actual question is a named tutor with a photograph, the subjects and levels they teach, where they studied, and how long they have been doing it.

That is not a soft preference. It is the same principle as any other trust question on a website: specific and checkable beats general and flattering, which is the argument in the trust signals that actually change behavior. The difference here is that the specific thing is a person rather than a credential badge.

Two practical tests for a tutor page. Could a parent recognize this person in a waiting room from the photograph. And does the page name the subject the parent searched for, in the tutor's own section, rather than only in a list elsewhere on the site.

If the business genuinely rotates tutors and cannot promise who, say that, and describe how the match is made and what happens if it is wrong. An honest process beats a photograph of somebody the child will never meet.

What can the results page actually claim?

Much less than most tutoring sites claim, and the constraint is federal.

The FTC's Endorsement Guides govern testimonials. Three parts of them decide what a tutoring site may put next to a parent's quote.

A testimonial is not evidence. Verbatim: an advertiser "must possess and rely upon adequate substantiation, including, when appropriate, competent and reliable scientific evidence, to support express and implied claims made through endorsements in the same manner the advertiser would be required to do if it had made the representation directly." Then, flatly: "Consumer endorsements themselves are not competent and reliable scientific evidence."

Read that against a page of parent quotes about score jumps. The quotes are not the substantiation for the score jumps. You need the substantiation separately, and you need it before the quote goes up.

A testimonial is read as typical. An endorsement "relating the experience of one or more consumers on a central or key attribute of the product will likely be interpreted as representing that the endorser's experience is representative of what consumers will generally achieve." If you cannot substantiate that, the page "should clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected performance" instead, and you need substantiation for that number too. For a tutoring business that means either you know your average outcome and can show the working, or you do not publish an outcome.

And the disclaimer does not fix it. This is the part people get wrong most confidently. The Guides work an example of a page of testimonials carrying the notice "These testimonials do not prove our product works. You should not expect to have similar results," and the conclusion is that the advertisement is still deceptive. "Results not typical" is not a cure. It is a line of small text under a claim that is doing the work anyway.

What else do the Guides require of the page?

Four things, all of them cheap to comply with and commonly missed.

Quotation marks mean exact words. An endorsement "may not be presented out of context or reworded so as to distort in any way the endorser's opinion or experience." Tidying a parent's grammar inside quotation marks is a small lie with a rule attached to it.

The endorser has to have been real, and current. Where the page represents that somebody used the service, they "must have been a bona fide user of it at the time the endorsement was given," and the page may keep running only while you have "good reason to believe that the endorser remains a bona fide user." A testimonial from a family who left four years ago, still on the homepage, is outside that.

People shown as actual clients must be actual clients. Stock photography beside a named quote is the fastest way to turn a true testimonial into a deceptive one.

And the responsibility does not transfer. The Guides say plainly: "An advertiser may be liable for a deceptive endorsement even when the endorser is not liable." They also reach the people who build the page, naming "advertising agencies, public relations firms, review brokers, reputation management companies, and other similar intermediaries." We are inside that clause on every client site we write, which is why we will not put a score claim on one without the arithmetic behind it.

What should the site say about vetting?

Say what is true, name the standard, and do not borrow a statute that does not apply to you.

In California, employees of an organization whose duties require direct contact and supervision of children are mandated reporters. The obligation that follows lands on the employer: whether or not it also trains them, the employer "shall provide their employees who are mandated reporters with the statement required pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 11166.5." Volunteers are expressly outside the definition, which matters for a center that uses volunteer helpers.

That is a real, checkable thing a tutoring business does, and saying so on the page answers a question parents have and rarely ask out loud. It also costs nothing, because you are describing compliance you already owe.

What not to do is reach for the youth service organization rules. Those requirements, the background checks and the written child abuse prevention policies and the two-adult rule, are scoped by reference to one paragraph of the reporter statute covering youth centers, youth recreation programs and youth organizations. A tutoring business's staff are reporters under a different paragraph, and the youth service organization chapter does not reference it. If you meet those requirements voluntarily, say you do it because you chose to. Do not imply a law requires it of you when it does not.

What does the enquiry form need?

Less than it asks for, and one field most tutoring forms are missing.

The standard tutoring form asks for the parent's name, email, phone, the student's name, grade, school, subjects, availability, and a free-text description of the problem. That is nine fields before anyone has spoken to a human, and every one of them costs submissions.

The version we would ship asks four things: how to reach you, the subject, the grade, and one open box. Everything else is a conversation. The general form of that argument, with the arithmetic, is in what a first-time visitor needs in five seconds and the field-by-field version is well established.

The field most often missing is when the parent wants to start. Tutoring demand is calendar-driven, and a parent enquiring in August for September is a different lead from one enquiring in April with an exam in five weeks. One question, two clicks, and it changes how the enquiry is handled.

Should the prices be on the site?

Yes, in a range, with what changes it.

Tutoring is a category where the price question is the first one asked and the last one answered, and the usual reason given for hiding it is that the work varies. It does, and a range plus the two or three things that move it inside the range answers that honestly. What a parent cannot do is guess, and a parent who cannot guess frequently does not enquire at all.

The general case, including what to do when the number genuinely cannot be published, is in publish your prices or lose the lead.

One tutoring-specific note. If you sell packages, say what happens to unused hours and whether they expire. That is the single most common source of a bad review in this category and it is a sentence on a page.

What would we do first?

The order is cheapest and most honest first.

Put the tutors on the site by name, with photographs. One page each for the people who teach the subjects you most want more of.

Audit the results page against the three tests above. Anything that implies a typical outcome needs substantiation you can produce, or it comes down. A "results not typical" line does not save it.

Date the testimonials and check they are still current. Anything from a family who left long ago either comes down or carries its date visibly.

Write one honest paragraph about vetting, describing what you actually do, without borrowing a statute aimed at somebody else.

Cut the form to four fields and add the start date.

Then publish a price range with the two things that move it.

Where these numbers come from

Three primary sources, read in full on 8 September 2026. There are no statistics in this article, because we could not read a source for tutoring conversion behavior and the figures in circulation come from companies selling tutoring software.

The substantiation rule, the typicality presumption, the worked example showing that a results-not-typical disclaimer does not cure a page, the exact-words rule, the bona fide user rule, the actual-consumers rule and the clause reaching intermediaries are all from the FTC's Endorsement Guides, 16 CFR Part 255, sections 255.0, 255.1 and 255.2. These are Guides, administrative interpretations rather than a rule carrying its own penalties, and the Guides say so themselves. They still describe how the Commission reads a page.

The mandated reporter status and the employer's obligation to provide the statement are from California Penal Code section 11165.7. That the youth service organization requirements do not reach a tutoring business is from the scope clause of Business and Professions Code section 18975, which defines its coverage by reference to one paragraph of the reporter statute and not the paragraph a tutoring business falls under.

This is information, not legal advice. If the results page is a material part of how the business sells, the reading above is the start of a conversation with a lawyer rather than a substitute for one.