When you intend to create a website for the school, it is advisable to design the website to meet your student’s parents/guardians’ digital expectations and other potential individuals considering bringing their children to your school. A parent’s choice to educate their children in your school is dependent on how you present your school, so you need to pay close attention to your digital and internet presence through a school website.
Best web design agencies state that a well-designed school website would feature visually appealing graphics, functional domain, website features, clear content, and information to give a concise representation of your school.
How Does This Influence Your School’s Operation?
A parent might not be physically present to search for a school for their child, hence the switch to conducting an online search. A school website serves as your leverage when people are searching for school features and a go-to place when critical contact information of your school member, management team, or any relevant school stakeholder is needed.
There are a few key things to keep in mind when creating a website for your school. We have singled out some of them below:
Key Elements of Quality Web Design for The Website for School
#1. The Homepage Must be Useful
What does it mean for a website homepage to be useful?
A website’s homepage usefulness is characterized by attractive features on the site, constructively enlightening contents, and simplicity to aid a quick understanding of intended messages. Many schools make the mistake of excessive content on their school website, thinking this would be a decisive factor to users who intend to bring their kids to the school. However, too much content on a school website would, in most cases, offer no real value to the users and instead seem confusing.
A well-designed website will allow easy navigation by users and on-time accessibility to information provided on the website. One of the essential information a school website should have is a calendar of the school activities. The calendar should highlight essential school events and an update of these events. A regular update on the school website would inform guest users and existing parents on past and upcoming school events.
#2. Responsive (Custom) Website Design
Mobile phones are increasingly being used to search and validate content on the internet. This, amongst other reasons, iterate the need to design a school website that conforms to a mobile device’s operation. In designing a functional school website, emphasis must be placed on site usability on mobile devices, especially in terms of screen size.
A responsive website design automatically resizes and formats the website pages relative to the device screen’s size for better usability and user experience.
Designing your school website for mobile phones allows for better communication with the school representatives and generates traffic to the site. An additional advantage of a responsive web design is that anyone can share links to the website via social networks. More than half of Internet users are present on social networks, thus exposing your site visibility to a larger audience.
#3. Visibility of Important School Pages
We have already mentioned how important it is to display clearly, the school calendar on the website. You have to regularly upgrade the information on the school website besides the online calendar.
There are other important pages on a school website that parents and students often search.
One of such relevant pages is the contact page. Your school’s contact information must always be easy to find. Phone numbers and other important contact information should be clearly visible on your web design. Schools often do not emphasize this information as they should, which often leads to dissatisfaction amongst users.
#4. Good Navigation
A well-designed navigation system is perhaps one of the most important elements of a quality school website design. Navigating visitors to your site helps them find the site’s content easily. Simultaneously, a complicated navigation feature on a school website limits the site usage and results in a negative user experience when exploring the website.
Easy navigation also helps search engines like Google rank you better, drives more attention to your school; therefore, the need to emphasize a standard navigation structure when creating a school website design.
Conclusion
There are other elements worth including when considering the design of a school website. However, the above-listed elements do not negate or limit other relevant details that should make up a great school website’s design. Still, they are highly considered as a mandatory basis when designing a website.
Therefore, the school website should be simple and organized, feature a delightful home page, encourage usability, and flexible to use on any device to access timely information. Taking all things into consideration we strongly suggest that you hire one of the best web design agencies if you want your school’s website to look completely professional.