Your school’s website is likely to be the first impression prospective parents will get of your school, so it needs to do its job, and it needs to do it well.
Imagine, you’re looking for a school for your 10-year-old daughter so you Google the “best schools in Oxford for girls aged 10”…
Website A offers a lovely design, provides you with all the information you need, works well on your smartphone, has engaging photos of happy girls and is really easy to navigate. Website B takes forever to load, the photos look like they’re from the 80s, you can’t find the main menu and there’s a typo in the first sentence you read.
Which school are you likely to cross off your list straight away?
Your school’s websites look and feel needs to be spot on if you want prospective families to explore further. That’s why we’ve put together some top tips so you can make the most out of your school’s website.
#1 Define your audience
Your school website shouldn’t try to communicate to 100s of different audiences at the same time. Instead, you should be focusing on offering messages to your current or prospective families.
On your homepage, for example, you should focus on engaging your prospective families. Although you want your homepage to communicate how wonderful your school could be for prospective families, you also want information for current families to be easily accessible. Make sure you don’t forget about them altogether.
Make a plan for each page on your website and decide which of your audiences they should be engaging. The easiest way to nail down your audiences is to create some customer personas for your school, use our examples and template to make it even easier.
#2 It can be found
You could have a beautiful website, jam-packed with amazing content, but if no one can find it, what’s the point?
You need to ensure you have a strong SEO (search engine optimisation) plan in place that guarantees your school page 1 presence. Take a look at our SEO Checklist to make sure you’re on the right track.
#3 Make sure key information can be found easily
Most people that land on your website will do because they’ve searched some like “best schools near me”, this is an unbranded search term, so your school’s homepage needs to easily offer some key information so that these people that land on your website know that they’re in the right place and they can begin exploring your school further.
- It needs to say what you do and what you are
- Offer your USPs
- Tell them how they can learn more about your school
- Where your school is based
#4 Make sure every page has a CTA
You want to make sure that your school website offers clear call to actions, so that prospective families know exactly what steps they should take next.
It can be time-consuming to ensure every page has a planned next step. However, when your website has “dead-end pages”, you leave your website visitors with two options:
- Try and find the information they’re looking for on their own.
- Leave your website and look somewhere else.
Moral of the story, make sure every page on your website has a call to action, whether that be downloading a prospectus, and enquiry form, more information etc.
#5 Brand is important
Your school website’s design, content and photos need to be representative and in line with your school’s brand.
Getting a coherent balance in the use of logos, images and even tone of voice is a challenge for many schools when it comes to their website. Ensuring people find a consistent version of your brand throughout the website is important for building a sense of familiarity, dependability and trust.
We recently wrote about brand consistency and why it’s so important for your school, have a read here.
Final thoughts
You should look at your school’s website as an online brochure for your school.
For prospective families, it needs to communicate everything your school stands for, it needs to showcase how much fun children have at your school and it needs to show them why they should choose your school. And for current families, it needs to tell them everything they need to know from term dates and school developments to online homework and staff information.