If the only impression someone had of your school was from looking at the website, what would they think of it?
They say you only have one chance to make a first impression. If your school website is your first impression, you want it to be a good one. Your website is your school’s front door to the community. Your school’s high-achieving students, impressive faculty, robust extracurricular programs, and rigorous curriculum will mean little unless your school delivers the right impression. Even an airline with a sparkling safety and on-time record can suffer from a major image problem if the peanuts are stale or the seat cushions are tattered.
A poorly designed school website can be an inaccurate representation of your school. And when parents visit your website and leave frustrated or with a bad impression, it hurts your school’s reputation.
Perception is everything
Your website is a major touch point for your school brand. Brand, remember, is not just the look of your product or service, but the community’s experience with your school. Websites are a major part of that experience. Take a look at these Top 10 School Website Designs, and see for yourself what makes them stand out.
Any school communicator who is serious about the school or district’s image should place a lot of emphasis on the school website as part of the overall brand experience for the entire school community. It’s not only parents that you’re trying to engage, but also your students, staff, media and community members – all of whom are all influenced by your school’s brand. This influence can translate into better attendance at PTO meetings and sporting events; more participation in fund-raising events; more engagement on social media channels; or even more votes for a school tax levy.
In a column for Forbes, Richard Breitengraser talked about the emotional connection that some brands – think Apple, Barbie, Nutella – have built with their customers. Choosing where to send your child to school is an emotionally-driven decision, and strong branding helps to create the sense of trust and intimacy that will encourage families to join your community. Strong branding isn’t possible without a well-designed website that reflects your school’s mission and values – a website that will keep people coming back. Here’s an article that features great school district website design examples that will keep parents coming back.
Build trust, build engagement
Trust is crucial to the function of a school environment and community, but the way we build this trust has changed.
The landscape of interaction between schools and the surrounding community is different now than it was 20 years ago. It’s no longer safe for schools to have an open-door policy. Instead, schools have to be careful and conscious about who comes and goes on their campus, and this places the burden of establishing trust more heavily on school communications. What can’t be done in person must now be done digitally.
Parents and community members must rely on a school’s media savvy – including websites, social media and non-digital communications – to form their opinions and (hopefully) create positive associations with the school.
The burden of establishing trust depends heavily on school communications. What can’t be done in person must now be done digitally.
Great web design can engender trust in any organization. According to web credibility research from Stanford, 75 percent of users admit to making judgments about an organization’s credibility based on their website’s design.
Frankly, if your website suffers from poor design, it might seem like you don’t care about other aspects of the school (refer back to the tattered airline seats). A quality website can set the precedent of high expectations and reinforce the very values you’ve devoted a career to building.
If your school website does not reflect the quality of the school, you are missing a big opportunity.
Set expectations
Websites these days are expected to not only look professional, but also to function in a professional way. This means your website needs to be extremely well-designed in terms of usage and navigation. It should always be up to date, and frequently used information such as staff directories, calendar events and even lunch menus should be easy to find when a user arrives on the site. As the content core for your school’s social media, the website needs to be mobile-friendly more than ever before. Your school website is the communications hub for your district.
SchoolNow’s founder and CEO Steve Williams paraphrases Apple founder Steve Jobs; “Design is not just what it looks and feels like,” says Steve. “Design is how it works. In order to fully communicate and engage, your school website needs to work well and look good.”
Great businesses invest in good websites because they know how important it is to connect online with the public. Their website can make or break them. The same can be said for any school. Be sure to review these four pre-planning musts for your next school website to help set expectations.
Create the positive experience
Okay, so what constitutes good design? It’s not simply colors, layout, and images.
Your goal should be to make your website a comfortable experience for your users. This means all users – not just website visitors, but also school users as well (i.e., the ones responsible for managing the site). Your school’s communications director or the various content managers or writers assigned to keep your web content current need to have a positive experience on the back end, too.
Remember, people are not coming to your website because they want to. They are looking for information. Your school website design will define how easily they can reach this information, how thorough the information is, and how they feel about your school after they’ve obtained the information they need.
The more organized your website is, the more inviting it will remain, building confidence in your visitors that they’ll get the information they need when they visit next. What’s more, they’ll want to stay connected, improving the overall education experience for all involved.
Alternatively, if they can’t find what they need or struggle to find it because of a poorly organized website, this experience will put your school in a negative light.
Conclusion
Your school website should be a reflection of your school – the students, the staff, the facilities, the experience. It has more visitors, after all, than the front lobby, the football game or any school play. Your website’s design is more important than you may realize.
Your school may very well be that airline with the sparkling on-time performance and spotless safety record, but are you making sure the peanuts are fresh, the flight attendants are helpful and friendly, and the seats aren’t tattered?
Use great design on your school website to ensure it reflects just how great your school truly is.
And if you need help with putting together a website for your great school, check out the resources at SchoolNow, a school communications provider that produces some great websites along with other digital communication solutions.
