With a company focus on branding and website design for schools across all calibres and communities, you would be forgiven for thinking that we are only interested in the aesthetics of a website and how it looks to the end user.
But a visually stunning and effective website needs to do more than just ‘look good’.
That’s why, here at Cleverbox, we work with schools to deliver websites which optimise on both design AND functionality, for your end users.
This article uncovers three of today’s top school website design tools that we recommend you use to fully comprehend your user data, analyse website visits in a meaningful way, and ensure that more users are able to find your school website in the first place.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a go-to for businesses and organisations across almost all industries. The tool is useful not just for enhancing website design for schools, but also providing commercial and small businesses with key information about who is using their site, where they are coming from, and where they are going.
One of the great things about Google Analytics is that it really can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be, with the interface offering tailored solutions to the various stats that may interest you. At a top level, it is easy to glean statistics such as the average session duration or bounce rate of website visitors, which are two important metrics to monitor, whatever your industry. Dig just a little deeper, and you’ll be able to see which referral platforms they are finding your school website on, what the bounce rate is for each individual page, and which of your pages are the most popular, across any given timeframe.
From here, and using this information, you can assess which pages of your school website are performing well, which messages are successfully drawing users towards your website, and deduce what kind of changes and improvements will lead to a better and more successful user experience.
For new users, we recommend getting to know Google Analytics and its capabilities first, before establishing data segments based on the information which really matters to your school. Some of the top nuggets of information that our schools utilise the most range from:
- Where visitors are logging in from in terms of their location
- Which pages they are looking at and whether they are encouraged to stay on site, or leave.
- Which page they are arriving on
- Which avenue they are coming from – e.g., paid advertising, social media or organic search
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity is a new tool that was released towards the end of 2020 and is designed to give you a visual analysis of your website’s user data through session recordings and heatmaps. When it comes to website design for schools, Microsoft Clarity is valuable in the way it allows you to record real-time user data, understanding how users are interacting with the site, what is keeping them there and, just as importantly, what is making them leave.
The analytics data is intuitive and easy to navigate, but when combined and integrated with a Google Analytics account the plethora of information you can unpack is huge. Meanwhile, if you prefer to keep it simple, Microsoft Clarity introduces all the standard information you need to know – free of charge. Some of the top data shared by Microsoft Clarity includes:
- Total website sessions in a set period of time
- How many individual users visited your website in a set period of time
- Your average session duration for users who visit your site
- How many pages users visited during their session
- Any errors they encountered – Clarity records any ‘rage clicks’ or ‘dead clicks’ to identify and links that may be broken – a particularly useful stat when it comes to making necessary improvements and analysing the success of your website design.
All information can also be filtered by country, browser or device depending on what kind of data you need to provide insight into the website design of your school’s online presence.
Google Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is a ‘ranking signal’ brought into effect in 2021, that focuses on your website’s technical specifics that Google considers to be important. You can review your website against these scores using the Google PageSpeedInsights tool. These new signals are divided primarily into three experience metrics, to measure your user’s experience on a webpage. They are:
Largest Contentful Paint: This measures your page loading performance, from when the page starts loading to when the largest text block or image element is rendered on the screen.
In order to improve this, speak to your developer about setting up lazy loading, and remove any unnecessary third-party scripts. Don’t worry if you don’t have access to developer time, there are other steps you can take to reduce your page loading performance. One of the biggest culprits of poor loading time are images, so always ensure that you have compressed your images as much as possible, without losing that high resolution in the picture. You can do this when exporting your image from Photoshop or even from online image compressors like Squoosh.
First Input Delay: This measures your ease of interaction in milliseconds, from when your user first taps a button to when the browser is able to respond to that interaction.
If you find that this is an issue for your site, you can try minimising your Javascript, or using a browser cache. If you don’t have access to a professional developer, there are a number of CMS plugins out there to aid you here, including Asset Clean Up. You can then check your score again on the free-to-use Google PageSpeedInsights tool!
Cumulative Layout Shift: This measures your visual stability from a user’s perspective, and how many elements move between two frames on the screen and if so, how far they move.
If this is an issue for your site, you can try using set size attributes for any and all media on your site. A helpful tool to really identify what areas of your page are shifting is the Cumulative Layout Shift Debugger which shows you which elements are shifting in a really helpful, visual GIF format. You can then cross reference the debugger with the “avoid large layout shift” section of your PageSpeedInsights tool, to find out which of your elements are contributing the most to your CLS!
Here at Cleverbox, we not only recommend the above tools, but we also provide guidance in implementing them and ensuring that the data you are receiving is practical and actionable. Using the right tools and the right data, our team can help you to keep your school website at the top of its game, all year round.
If you’d like to find out more about exactly what your users think of your website, you can get in touch with our friendly team today who would love to discuss your objectives. Get in touch today via e-mail or on 0208 466 7222.