What makes a good school website design?

We’re often asked to present ideas for what makes good school website design. Our recommendations normally include the following:

Strong and well structured layout

School websites are large and dynamic. It’s imperative that they look good whatever content is uploaded. Using a strong and structured layout keeps it looking clean and clear at all times.

Audience Groups

School websites attract a number of different audience groups – prospective pupils, prospective parents, current pupils, current parents, staff, alumni and outsiders. It’s important to create user journeys that reflect these groups.

Easy Management of the website

With so much content, and with time pressured environments, it’s crucial that management of a school website is easy and quick. We always seek to design school websites with a view to easy management.

Relevant News and Events across website

School websites generate a huge amount of news and events. To show the depth of what a school has to offer, and to avoid dead-end pages, we normally recommend that relevant news and events are fed around the website.

Strong use of imagery and video content

Users are much more interested in impact images and videos than long boring pages of text.  Videos are especially good at putting messages across. In the same way as news and events, we suggest that relevant videos are fed throughout site as well as kept in media repository. Images should be big, but not at the expense of content.

Responsive design

With so many different devices these days, it’s crucial that a school website adapts to the device through which it is viewed. Read more here about what makes a design responsive, and how this can work for a school website.

 

 

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