It's a key time of year for your school website and there's lots to do to provide the information that your visitors will be looking for at this time of year. It's also a great time to actively engage your audience and meet their needs very well.

Let's go through the key visitors at this time of year and what they're looking for.

New Starters

It doesn't matter whether you're a primary school or a sixth form, whatever stage of education you cover this time of year means that students and parents will be looking at your website to find the information they need more than ever. More importantly they'll be looking for the reassurance that they've chosen the right school or college.

The best way to do this through your website is to talk, talk and talk to your visitors about what they can expect. Here's the top tasks to make sure new starters can find what they are looking for.

• Create a new, top-level page of content called New Starters (or similar) just for the next 3-4 months that contains all the information they need. You can move this page in the Autumn term but it's important it's one of the first pages that visitors see at this time of year.
• Provide as much information as possible about what students (and parents) can expect from school; key dates and times that they need to know; reminders for students and parents about what is expected of them. Also, think about uniform information, attendance and school day timings.
• Talk over summer about the preparations that are being made to welcome new starters. Use Social Media to keep people up to date and build the excitement for new starters. The aim is to make them feel like they've already started before they actually have. You can achieve reinforce any liaison work simply by talking to them throughout the summer holidays. (Use Hootsuite to schedule social posts if you aren't around to do this over summer).
• Make sure that all parents and students are aware of the support that is available in school while they're settling in.

Exam Results Preparation

For 2 weeks in August a large proportion of your website visitors will be thinking about exam results. There are a few simple things you can do on your website and through your social channels to inform, reassure and ease the burden through this period.

(this is clearly primarily for those awaiting GCSE and A-Level results but this can of course be applied earlier in the year to those undergoing SATs or heading towards the winter term for those sitting mocks)

• Create a page of content called Exams (or similar) which will be your dedicated page for those looking for information on exams.
• Include all key dates and timings for results and clearing if relevant.
• Make it very clear who is available for support and advice leading up to and after results come out, lots of people will be looking for this reassurance.
• Keep talking socially about what is available, what to expect and key timings.

Updating Your Welcome

This is a really important page to keep up to date because it is a page that is visited very often on many school and college websites. The audience for this page includes students and parents of new starters and current parents, those looking for which school to apply for and of course OFSTED.

To really get this page right for your entire audience make sure you include the following information, written personally by the Head / Principal.

• Let's get this one out of the way - you need a photo of the Head! Lots of Heads don't like the idea but it's really important so get it done! (Here's a great example btw)
• Talk personally throughout the piece; write in a style with which you are comfortable to give the most accurate impression of yourself as the leader of the school or college.
• Include details about what you aim to achieve in school, what your priorities are and why you believe your school is a great school.
• Mention plans for the coming year (this means you need to keep it updated at least once a year!) and talk lots of things about which you are most proud.
• Above all this, talk about the students much more than anything else.

Term Dates

For most schools and colleges this page is visited a whopping 4 times as much as any other page. The reasons are pretty obvious.

That means you need to to keep it up to date because it's important content to your visitors. There are good ways of creating this page and there are conversely bad ways as well.

GOOD

Create text content within a page on your website. Make it structured in a way that is basically a list of dates. That way it will be readable on any device. Don't try to do anything fancy; just list the information and break it down in to school years.

BAD

Don't add a pdf file or display the content in any way that requires the user to download the information, open a file or leave the Term Dates page in any way. No matter how good your document reader is, it isn't the right thing to use for this page.

If it means you need to take the time to write this content in the page, it's definitely worth it.

Hopefully that's all really useful to you as you prepare for the new school year. Make sure you download our new (free) Schudio School Website Planner for the coming academic year as well.