School website best practice is a topic that comes up frequently when we speak with partner schools across the country.
Some of the common questions we get asked include:
- How should the site navigation menu be structured?
- What statutory polices do we need to include?
- Should we include video content?
- How can our site rank higher in Google?
Two of the first things to consider when exploring school website best practice may sound obvious, but are imperative to the solution.
1. Who is your audience?
It isn’t just parents of your pupils that will use your school website – prospective parents, potential employees, teaching staff, and even students will often use your website to find out more information, without you even realising.
Having a website which serves all of the above user groups is crucial to establishing an online brand which showcases your school in its best light. Even as restrictions ease, and children return to school, your audience will be accustomed to the convenience of having an informative website online for all of their needs. Therefore, your online image of your brand needs to be outstanding.
2. What is your audience trying to achieve?
We recommend regularly taking a step back and asking yourself:
Is my school showcasing its best self through our website, and does our website deliver the information that users need, in an intuitive and user friendly way?
There are many things a user may need to know or find when using your school website, from locating key term dates to downloading your school prospectus. It’s essential to keep your website as intuitive as possible, to ensure that the average user interacts more with your site and can locate the information they need.
Creating a sitemap in a separate spreadsheet is a great exercise to plot out your current site, and to ascertain where a new dedicated page might need to be added, or where one might no longer be needed.
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Create a Community Spirit
First and foremost, your school website is a hub of information for a wide range of users. It is the home of your brand. The focus should be on the best way in which you can bring your school to life and create a community feeling that will impress existing parents and entice prospective ones.
Some of the best options for bringing your school to life in ways which will attract all users include:
- Video content
- Captivating and branded imagery
- Bold heading
- Interesting and engaging content
- Clear calls to action
Keep your site visual and use terminology which will speak to all users without confusing people. As with any industry, unused or redundant pages can make for a stilted user journey, and so we recommend regularly reviewing your website and even asking users for feedback, to ensure that the experience is as streamlined as possible.
School Website Navigation
One of the most important parts of any website, regardless of the industry or sector, is the navigation menu. Website statistics gurus across the world report that it takes a user less than a second to form an opinion on a website, with this first impression informing their future use of a site. Creating a seamless experience both visually and technically across all of your touch points is pivotal in generating the right opinions about the skill areas of your school.
Taking a Different Approach to School Website Design
At Cleverbox we take a slightly different approach to most when considering website navigation for schools. Rather than just thinking about what looks good, we take a data driven approach that incorporates user experience (UX) design into the school websites we build. Harnessing the power of the user experience tool Microsoft Clarity, we have the ability to review real life user sessions on your school website to ascertain any areas that require improvement, potential pitfalls and areas of opportunity. This data not only helps your website look the part, but engineers an effective and efficient user experience and journey throughout the site.
This approach is one to consider even if your school website is aesthetically pleasing. Think back to how your website navigation reached its current state. We see many schools ‘bolt on’ new focus areas or pages to their navigation menu over time, which gradually starts to see the menu lose its initial logic.
Examples of this are especially pertinent at the moment with many schools adding sections to their sites such as ‘COVID 19’ information as well as virtual learning hubs and portals for students to interact with. Taking time to review how these parts of the site function can unlock significant opportunity and potential for how to improve the efficiency of your site design.
Keep Your Website Fresh
Keeping your website up to date and informative is imperative to maintaining a positive impression to your users. This is especially pertinent in today’s world with more people than ever needing information from your school website. Achieving a fresh and regularly updated site can be achieved through blogs, news posts, and – where appropriate – the addition of new webpages which provide updates on the crucial happenings of the school.
Some of the great ideas we have seen and helped to implement across different schools include:
- Calendars for all users, which spotlight term dates, special and noteworthy events. This can also include school trips and other events like parents evening and school showcases or open days.
- Social media RSS feeds that pull in stories from your various social media platforms.
- Helpful guides to equip parents with everything they need from the mental health and wellbeing of pupils to extra tuition, homework links and more.
- Testimonials and endorsements for prospective parents.
We strongly recommend hosting a regularly updated blog on your school website. Not only does it keep students and parents up to date with happenings around the school but it’s excellent for improving your search engine rankings.
Cleverbox Top Tip
Examples of School Website Best Practice:
Working with primary schools, secondary schools and multi academy trusts across the UK, we see a fair share of the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to website design! In the section below we have showcased some shining examples of school website best practice, and inspiration for how to structure your site to make it visually appealing and easy to navigate for users.
Primary School:
https://www.rowde.wilts.sch.uk
Secondary School:
https://www.johnwarner.herts.sch.uk
Multi Academy Trust:
https://www.harrisfederation.org.uk
For more advice on school website best practice and guidance on how to implement any of the above ideas onto your own school website, get in touch with us at Cleverbox at 0208 466 7222 or on team@cleverbox.co.uk.