Know Everything About A School Website Design: Tips And Things To Consider

908

9 Apr, 2024

school-website-design-tips

Are you planning to develop a school website design? Creating a school website is important for the school and potential students as it can provide all the required information in one place. In addition, a website is a must-have communication tool for staff, students, parents, and community members. But developing a website that is interactive and easy to navigate is important. 

Creating such a school website need you to focus on layout, color scheme, font size, image optimization, content, and others. Professional web development services help you define your requirements and create a perfect website.

If you are motivated to design your school website, start by answering the following questions.

  • Why do you want to design a school website?
  • What should your school website look like?
  • How to design a school website? 
  • What are the factors to consider? 
  • Are there any elements that are important to be included? 

Well, read through this article and learn about education website design.

Interested in our School Web Design & Development Services?

  • Achieve Your Brand Vision
  • Drive Customer Engagement
  • Customize UI for Intuitive Digital Interactions

School Website Design: Why It Matters

Before knowing the things to consider and the elements to be included, it is important to understand the concept of a school website design. When we talk about website design, it refers to the overall look and feel of the website. It starts with planning and building the website's basic elements and moves ahead by adding them to make it functional. 

From the customer's perspective, a smooth web design makes searching and locating the content you are looking for easier. Additionally, a quality website design aims at delivering the experience to the audience. The same is the case with the school website design

When you design a school website, a user-friendly design will offer you a competitive edge over others while ensuring better reach. Acting as the communication medium, the school website enhances credibility and connectivity for the school. 

Considering the same, the website design is important as it helps to find the following better:

  • Information about the school, its facilities, and its classes.
  • Details on the courses, live classes, tutorials, and others.
  • Information about the admissions and upcoming events.
  • Mission, vision, and goal of the school.
  • Information section for parents regarding important news, notices, and exams.

Multiple things will make the school website design great, but its navigation and simplicity are important. While this was an overview of the school website design, the question is how to make a school website. Well, read through and know the important things to consider while selecting it.

Things To Consider Before Designing A School Website

If you are thinking about developing a great design for the school website, it's better to connect with a school website company that can guide you. They will help you land the best website designing solutions. The main aim of the online facility is to stay connected with the audience and offer the right information at the right time.

Things To Consider For School Website Design

Being an effective way to communicate to the parents, students, and teachers, this impression needs to be spot on. It will decide how the aspirants look at your school and their chances of applying for admission. Hence, making a first good impression online is quite crucial. 

While the information to be included is already known, you should consider a few factors for the education website design.

1. Specific Goals For Your School Website

The first thing to consider is the goals. Before starting to create the blueprint for the school website design, you should first connect with the internal stakeholders like the school board, administration, and instructors to understand the uses of the website. The goal will define how the website should be. To define the goal, you can try to obtain answers to a few questions like:

  • Is the website going to be used for school branding?
  • Is the website going to be an effective means of communication? 
  • Do you want parents of prospective students to be able to contact you for more information about your school?
  • Is the website going to operate as a gateway to an LMS?
  • Is there a need for a separate space for parents and students who are currently enrolled?

Getting answers to these questions will help you determine the outlook, sections, visuals, and rest of the details of the website.

2. Website Building Platform

Once you have set the goals, you can choose the platform for creating the website. You have multiple options that you can select from, like WordPress, Joomla, Wix, and others. Since this will be an educational website, you must focus on a platform that offers reliability and smooth navigation options.

WordPress is the most reliable platform and powers around 43% of the websites on the internet.

WordPress is available for free download and installation, with many different layouts and themes. It features a large selection of free plugins that you may use to build virtually any website style. Additionally, it has an effective development and support network to help you.

3. Technical Considerations

Once you have the platform selected, you need to define the technicalities. Start with selecting the domain name and service. Post that, you would require to have a hosting service. Make sure that you select a reliable and friendly hosting service. This will help to enhance the visitor experience.

Seeking safe and secure hosting will also affect the speed at which the site is loading. The faster the website loads, the better it is for the school. 83% of people expect a website to load in less than 3 seconds.

4. Administrators and Contributors

A website needs to be maintained and updated regularly to avoid downtime. Being a school website, you need to hire an internal team to maintain the website and ensure it's running. At the same time, you would need developers, writers, and others who can enrich the platform with the latest and most valuable information.

5. Must-Have Webpages

When planning for the school website design, you also need to focus on the web pages you are willing to have. Since the website will impact the school's overall image, you must make a precise choice. The main pages that you should have are:

  • Home Page
  • About Us Page
  • Contact Us Page
  • Admissions Page
  • Classes, Courses, or Curriculum Page
  • Information or News Page
  • FAQ Page
  • Gallery Page
  • Testimonial Page

6. Branding And Marketing Of The Website

Every school thrives on creating a brand image and marketing its aim positively. The website design should be in sync with the brand. Planning this early will ensure that you have the right concept and idea of what you will do and what kind of design you are looking for.

7. Website Policies, Security, And Safety

Most school websites include news and details on a wide range of people. However, you must make sure that you establish guidelines that users must go by while publishing text, photographs, videos, and other content. Avoid sharing students, staff, or other people's private information that could be misused if it falls into the wrong hands.

8. Cost Considerations

Like any other purchase, designing a website also comes at a cost. Before designing your school website, you must start by deciding your budget and the monthly maintenance cost. The type of platform you install and the level of continuous support needed for your website will affect the cost. Avoid rushing, as committing without having the right budget can be messy.

A website is an important resource for a school. Before deciding to move forward with this kind of endeavor, you must first prepare and consider all of the factors above.

Features & Elements To Include In Your School Website

If you have everything ready to create the school website design, the next is to start with the elements. The best thing to do here is to connect with the education web design company that can help you sort down features to include and exclude.

The elements consumers appreciate the most in website design include:

  • photos and images (40%)
  • color (39%)
  • videos (21%)

An expert will help you understand how to strategically put the elements that can attract more and more visitors to the website. Some features are required on your school website, while most schools add a variety of other features based on their needs. This is the reason you should focus on the importance of web design.

Features To Make Your School Website Design

In light of this, let's look at some of the crucial components and features you must include on your school website:

1. Social Media Feeds

If you create a school website, ensure you use it to its full potential. Most schools develop websites after a year or two, so you must make people aware of the past and present. Thus, social media feeds become essential to keep visitors updated about recent and upcoming events. At the same time, you can also share the student's achievements on the platform. 

Another way to use this element is to share the messages or feeds shared by students and parents on social media that can give others an idea to others about what the school is all about.

2. Telling Your Story Through Video

The things we see have a greater impact than what we listen to and read. Well, this is true for the school website as well. It is crucial for school websites to include brief videos that emphasize specifics about your institution. 

Users can relate to your content and learn more about your offerings and accomplishments if you include embracing videos of your institution. You can produce and provide any video describing your business, your school's environment, offerings, accomplishments, and more.

3. School Calendar

Every school has a schedule of events that will happen over the year. This is pre-defined and shared with the students. It includes exams, functions, trips, science fairs, and others. Adding this element to the school website design can greatly impact the potential admissions. 

If your website has a well-organized calendar, it would be simple for parents and children to acquire all the necessary information at home. Students can quickly identify the events they must attend by looking at the event calendar. By incorporating capabilities like these, you're enabling the front desk employees to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on other things.

4. A Well-Designed "About Us" Page

A page least considered about but is the most important of all is About us. If you think about it, this is your introduction to the visitors, and share everything you stand for. 

It aids the user in developing a deeper understanding of the beginnings of your institution, as well as the setting and accomplishments. Your principles and ethics, as well as your accomplishments, ambitions, and USP that set your school apart from rivals, can all be shared on the "about us" or "our school" page.

If the "about us page" falls short of impressing your visitors or providing them with the details they need, it could reflect poorly on your website and your institution. The opposite is also true: if your school's website lacks an "about us" page, there is a good chance that visitors will become lost and leave.

5. FAQ Page

Like any other website, a school website design should also have an FAQ page. There are multiple questions in parents' minds when looking for a school for their kids. Adding the basic questions linked to class, curriculum, and events can be a good start. 

By providing a FAQ page on your school's website, you can ensure that potential students don't miss any important information and can find the answers they need as soon as possible. These techniques encourage website visitors to interact and learn more about your schools. 

Depending on the inquiries you receive from prospects, you may always continuously update your FAQs. As you add more queries, more visitors will be interested in participating in your website's activities.

6. Start Offering A Newsletter

The best way to stay connected with the people is to offer them a regular newsletter. This way, you can share what is happening in the school, the future plans, and even what the students are upto. While this is a small practice, a daily or weekly newsletter will keep students and parents updated, and they will not miss any great information.

While most schools share these newsletters over email, there is a better option just to upload them on the website. But ensure that the newsletter is easy to find before uploading it to any particular website page. This will guarantee that parents always have access to the most recent and previous newsletters.

7. Contact Form

A good school website company will suggest you add a contact form to the website to enrich and add value. The contact form on your website will assist visitors in contacting the front desk. Even though you may have a FAQ section on your website, a visitor may still have several questions about your service or services.

You can ensure people can get in touch with the school and find the information they need by including a contact form. You can include a part in your contact form where people can enter their inquiries so that your institution can get in touch with them and respond with the appropriate information.

Some site visitors may want to schedule an appointment, while others may be parents who want to learn more about an event that is coming up, their child's performance, or something else. Including these options in your contact form can improve your user experience and motivate site users to finish filling out the final form.

While all these elements are very important, one thing to remember is that you must follow the website navigation best practices. A smooth navigation takes your website and school way ahead of others. Also, you might need to add other elements based on your school. Staying updated and keeping your website in tune with the changing scenario is important to impact visitors positively. 

Now, once you have the elements and the blueprint of the school website design ready, you can create one perfect website with the help of some great tips.

Tips To Design School Website

School Website Design Tips

Designing a school website is not hard when you have the right blueprint of the steps available to you. At the same time, your work becomes even more simplified and easy if you know the best website design tips. These tips are the ones that have been tried and tested by experts over the years and have resulted in positive outcomes. So, let us get started with the school website design tips here:

1. Keep Your Content Ready

When designing the school website blueprint, you must have your content ready. It should include everything right from the information you plan to upload to the data that will be updated regularly. This will give an idea of what kind of website design will be a better option for you. 

If the data is not ready, you might be required to make changes in your website design in the future, which is not desirable in any way. The main things that you should keep in mind while designing your content are:

  • The content should be SEO optimized.
  • The information should be properly headed, and the content should be subdivided into the right sections.
  • The text should be easy to understand by everyone.
  • There should be an option for translation, as this is a school website.
  • In the case of videos, have the transcripts with them. This will make it easiest for visitors to grasp the message.

2. Add A Sticky Navigation To Increase Inquiries

The small icons that can be seen on the side of the website, these sticky navigation provide quick access to basic services. You can now inquire, connect with us, or apply as the sticky navigations for a school website design. The best part is that these do not hamper the look and feel of the website and allow the user to have the added advantage of quick access.

3. Custom Page For A News Story

Having a pop-up page for the news story is not worth it. When you create a school website, you need to ensure that there is a custom page for the news story. Developing a different page for the news can help the readers a lot. Simultaneously, you can give the links on the side or bottom of the pages to make the visitors aware of the latest updates or news.

4. Leverage Your Community For More Authentic Content

The best way to gain a competitive edge is to leverage the community for better and more authentic content. Seeking potential members willing to have a stake in your website can be a plus. Connecting with writers, video editors, educators, and others can enrich your website immensely.

5. Make Website Mobile Friendly

52% of users are less likely to engage with a company due to a bad mobile experience.

A design appealing to the eye is critical, but it's crucial to ensure that the design is responsive to mobile devices. A mobile-first website actively adjusts the general design to guarantee that the mobile experience is just as good as the desktop experience. This kind of design for the school website ensures that you offer the best user experience. Connecting with the expert can help you get the mobile responsive design best practices and solutions.

6. Use Thank You Pages

Including a thank you page in your school website design can bring about a great change. When the visitor fills up the form on your website, it is better to share a thank you page rather than a message. This will allow you to share more information or facts about the school and increase its value.

7. Call-To-Action Buttons

A common mistake that people make is using the same CTA button at every place. Doing so, you will lose the personal touch that can make your website stand out from the others. The better idea is to use customized CTA based on the page where you are using them. This will add value to your website and allow the visitors to understand multiple aspects.

8. Focus On Interior Pages As Much As Your Home Page

66% of users are in favor of accessing a beautifully designed website when they are given 15 minutes to gather the information or consume content.

The interior pages are often neglected, and only the home page is highly considered while designing. But this can hamper the overall image and impact the website at large. You must maintain consistency for the interior pages as well. A few things to consider are as follows:

  • Use images and videos for better engagement.
  • Use proper heads and tabs.
  • Add CTAs as needed for better reachability and connectivity.
  • Ensure the formatting is right.
  • Ensure to be authentic and share verifiable information.

Conclusion

A school website design is usually simple and interactive. One should avoid complicating it and adding content that might not be relevant. Though there is an option to update the design and add new elements as and when needed, it ensures that you have the right team to work on it. With the help of the experience, you can get a website that is user-friendly, works properly, and is properly synchronized. 

Even when an education web design company assists you, connect with the experts only. Janbask digital agency is indeed one of the finest options to select. It has the best team and field experts who will be there to offer you the best services when it comes to school website development and design.

Looking to Create a School Website?

  • Well-optimized landing pages
  • Strong & visible CTA
  • An intuitive website layout

FAQs

1. What should you include to make a good website for a school?

A top-notch school website should have a variety of high-quality content, such as contact information, greetings, statements about the school's mission and values, photographs, learning resources, curriculum data, news, an events calendar, and other details about the institution.

2. What are the 5 elements of a good school website design?

The five elements of the school website design include content, usability, aesthetics, visibility, and interactivity. 

3. Can the school website design be changed once the website is launched?

Yes, a school website design can be changed once launched, but it will take time. It would require a deep analysis of the existing website and restructuring it.

4
Leave a Reply

avatar
4 Comment threads
0 Thread replies
0 Followers
 
Most reacted comment
Hottest comment thread
1 Comment authors
Emilio DavisZane BrownAmari JonesJax Williams Recent comment authors
  Subscribe  
newest oldest most voted
Notify of

J

Jax Williams

Informative blog

A

Amari Jones

Blog is well-explained

Z

Zane Brown

I’d love to read more such blogs

E

Emilio Davis

Thanks for sharing these insights


Get a Quote