Does your school website need a redesign?

Whether you love impactful full screen multimedia or prefer imagery and text side by side as soon as you land on a website, there are so many options available for the hero section of your school website.

Combining expert design with professional photography and videography can really add the ‘wow’ factor to that crucial first impression!

Take a look:

Great for keeping your website up to date with authentic, purposeful content, the popularity of mixed news and social feeds has flourished as of late. If you’re a multi-academy trust working on a trust-wide project, then you could also choose to pull in a mixed feed of school website news too!

Plus, search engines love regularly updated content, so this can also help with SEO.

If you’d prefer to make a real feature of your social media posts, especially if you have profiles on multiple channels, then a social media wall is the ideal opportunity to showcase your creativity!

Interspersing your snappy tweets with your vibrant Instagram posts can really help tell a story of your school and encourage users to follow you from their accounts too!

One of the most practical functions of a school website is the ability for you to share relevant information with your community and parents. Having an up-to-date calendar is the best solution for easy access to upcoming events, open days, trips, clubs and holidays.

And, if you choose to integrate your website with your internal Google or Microsoft calendar - you only need to add events once and they’ll appear on your school website like magic!

With many schools across all sectors now using a house system, sharing your house points on your school website is a brilliant way to increase engagement, encourage healthy competition and create a sense of pride within your community.

If your school has multiple entry points, either a secondary with a sixth form or an all-through independent, then it’s important that you cater your website to support all the different stakeholders you may encounter.

Split Landing Page

A split landing page is a popular option for schools that wish to give equal weight to areas which may have different audiences. In these examples, the user can decide whether to visit the main school website or the sixth form homepage:

 

Multiple Entry Points

If there are multiple entry points, or you’d prefer for your visitors to get a flavour of your whole website before segmenting them, then having dedicated entry points on the homepage is the perfect solution:
 
These entry points can then link through to dedicated bespoke landing pages showing content that is relevant to those specific individuals.

When choosing a new school for their child, some parents like to see ‘real world’ examples of where a student has thrived, or a parent has been thrilled with the education received.

Testimonials and quotes areas are great for sharing ‘social proof’ and giving a flavour of the school from those who attend. These could be from your Head Boy or Girl, from parents, alumni or staff and can be designed in numerous different ways – from a homepage segment to a full page of stories!

If your school has a long and interesting history, or even if you’re more modern but the past few years have been filled with exciting developments, then a history timeline will be right up your street!

There a so many ways of displaying the content to excite and engage your audience – from scrolling down the page or side to side, with imagery and text, before and after shots, videos... the opportunities are endless!

A lot of schools like to keep in touch with their former students once they have left and a dedicated alumni(ae) section is a great way to do this.

You can display photos of events, create sign up forms for them to subscribe to a newsletter, have a calendar of upcoming reunions, share their stories to inspire current students and so much more!

Animated infographics, number counters and stats have had a massive rise in popularity over the last few years.

They’re a creative and dynamic way of showing details such as the number of pupils in your trust, books in your library, successful university applications, exam results and more!

A ‘who’s who’ page is a must for any school website as it shows your leadership structure, teachers and support staff in a user-friendly, easily accessible manner.

Prospective and current parents can see who is teaching their child while future employees can see the team they’d be working with and the opportunities for progression.

Using an online form for your registration applications, job vacancies, sixth form admissions, absence reporting or teaching school course booking sign-ups is a great eco-friendly way to reduce paperwork and obtain the information you require quickly and effectively.

The results can be stored in your database, exported into a spreadsheet or emailed across to the relevant individual.

Whether you’re collecting funds for scholarships, charitable donations or upcoming projects, a dedicated donation page is a fantastic way to share information about your cause.

As well as telling your story, you can show updates on how previous donations have helped shape your organisation and even collect payments direct on site!

An interactive map allows your visitors to take a tour of your campus from the comfort of their own home. They can see a full plan of the buildings and grounds, then click relevant points to access pop-ups sharing information, images and videos about each section.

By sharing your vacancies on your website you can cut administration costs and promote your school at the same time! It also means it’s easy to update from your end and gives you full control over when vacancies are posted, changed and removed.

A school website is often used as a marketing tool to attract prospective parents, students and employees, which means that often, there are only certain sections of the content that are relevant to your current families and students.

A simple yet effective way of ensuring that parents can access the content they need when they need it is to create a bespoke parents area, with links to all the information they require – term dates, uniform, menus, trips etc.
 

See how these 3 schools have streamlined their parent areas: