Welcome back to those of you who enjoyed some time off over the holidays. We've been here working with our clients. Its great to see the different ways schools have been preparing their websites for the new academic year!
From new artwork requests to menu restructures to rewriting content we've enjoyed collaborating with you on these projects. For anyone looking for a little school website design inspiration here are some of my school website design ideas to inspire you.
School website design inspiration: Tip 1 - New Year, New Logo
Branding for your school has never been more important. Parents and Children at your school will be able to identify hundreds of retailers and companies based on the logo alone. Your logo is everywhere, letters, emails, uniform, signage...not to mention your school website! What does your logo say about you? Does it reveal part of your school identity and distinguish you from other schools? Or has it become a dated and blurred mark in the corner of your website?
Our graphic design team are experts in creating artwork that reflects your school in a positive and professional manner. Whether you would like a full redesign or a modern take on an existing logo our graphics team would love to have a chat with you about ways to bring your school brand into 2018.
School website design inspiration: Tip 2 - Exciting and Engaging
There are a few, easy to implement, ideas that separate amazing class pages from average class pages on school websites. Our recommendation would be to lead with images of the relevant staff. This is especially helpful for primary school children, as they can see photos of their teachers and TA's prior to starting school. For Schudio software users this can be set up and updated easily using "People Groups". You can create and control the images centrally but use them on multiple places through out the site. So while you are creating amazing class pages it is very easy to also build a great staff page.
Another great idea is to "tag" relevant content to your pages. For example, if you are writing a news article about a recent trip the Year 5 students went on, then that article can be tagged to the Year 5 page as related content. This way, when visitors go to your class page for the information they need, relevant information will be their for them to engage with without having to go hunting for it.
A really great example of this is Astley Park school. They have their images at the top, related content at the bottom and all other content is sat centrally. Im sure you will agree that this is a really interesting and exciting page to visit.
School website design inspiration: Tip 3 - An inside look into life at School
If I showed 10 websites to a recent visitor to your school building would they be able to pick out your site? There should be consistency between your school and your site. Your website is more that just a platform to share mandatory information, important though that is! It is also an opportunity to give people an inside look into your school environment.
Two schools who have recently given me some school website design inspiration are West Lancs School and Hawes Side Academy. West Lancs school use lots of pictures around their school to help their students. They have followed the same pattern on their school website. You can see they have used graphics in their menu navigation which are the same images displayed around school. If you were to visit the school you would recognise some of the images from the website.
Hawes Side Academy are a school in Blackpool who are proud to deliver Mandarin as one of their subjects. This too is reflected on their school website where you will see key headings and phrases have the Mandarin translation alongside them.
I would encourage you to consider what makes your school unique? Then apply that same theme to your school website. If you are not sure how to do this, then speak to a member of the Schudio team. We would be happy to hear your plans and help you to make them a reality.
We'd love to help...
If you are not sure where or how to start then I would recommend taking a look at our training options. This year we are excited to be introducing some new training sessions which will help you to gain a greater understanding of your requirements, content and design options and your audience. There is a training session for everyone!
We will also continue our monthly "Twilight Webinars". We will use this time to address common support questions, new features and sharing hints and tips! Twilight Webinars are free of charge so make sure you take advantage of this by booking on.
If you have any school website design inspiration hints and tips that you can share then I would love to hear about it. Tweet us the advice or a link to a great site so we can take a look.
