Find out more about the series of webinars that will be hosted throughout the month of June. 

1. School Jotter website training 

Liam and Charlotte from the School Jotter Delivery and Support Team will be hosting this webinar and will cover the following:

• What you need to know about school website development 
• The journey of the School Jotter website
• Pre-requisites and things to consider before building a school website

 

2. Make Your Website Ofsted Ready

This webinar is significant for those who would like to make their website Ofsted inspection ready. It will be hosted by Lawrence Contreras, one of the most experienced Account Managers in the School Jotter team.

We will cover the following in this session:

• How to structure your website to help you achieve an outstanding grade in Ofsted
• How to make your website easier to navigate for current parents
• How to use your website to promote your school to prospective parents and staff

3. Improve online communication with parents

In this session, we’ll discuss effective online communication with parents. This webinar will be hosted by Sam and will cover the following:

• How your website can be structured to make it easier for parents to find relevant information 
• Why and how messaging is important for parents
• How you can use mobile apps to enhance parent communication
• How you can reduce admin costs and costs in postage, paper etc. to support a greener environment

 

4. How to attract new parents to your school

This webinar focuses on how to attract new parents to your school website. It will be hosted by members of our expert team and will cover the following:

• How you can represent your school brand and values to best attract new parents
• The basics of getting you higher in Google search results  — including, page copy, page descriptions, and Google My Business

 

We’ll have a further series of events in the new academic year — if you’d like us to cover a particular subject, please get in touch. 

55% of all page views in the year 2021 came from mobile devices. Mobile applications are increasingly being preferred by people over desktops as they are convenient and easy to browse. 

As a result, more businesses are opting to have their own apps in the market as a way to connect with people. Your school can also benefit greatly from an app of its own.

It is not only a platform to put all the relevant information about the school happenings, but it also provides a space for students, parents, and staff to communicate as a community.

Top 5 advantages of using an app in school

Mobile applications have played a significant role in shaping education in the modern era. They help make studies fun and engaging for the students. Parents can stay updated about the school activities with their help.

The entire community can get involved to improve education with the help of easily accessible apps. Here are some of the most prominent benefits it offers.

1. Keeps everyone updated with the latest information

The traditional methods of circulating information via newsletters and notice boards were not effective in reaching every student and their parents. Apps allow schools to truly reach out to everyone in the community to relay information.

This is especially important for time-sensitive events such as cancellation of classes or urgent meetings being held.

2. Promotes communication

With apps being highly accessible, parents are more willing to use them to interact with the school and other parents. They can share their experiences and help others out.

Things that earlier required meetings and the physical presence of people can now be accomplished far more effectively without needing the people to leave their homes.

3. Boosts parent-teacher engagement 

Apps allow parents and teachers to have transparent conversations about the students. Earlier, teachers had to mostly rely on students relaying a message to the parents and their direct conversations were mostly limited to parent-teacher meetings.

Now, parents can view things like attendance records and their ward’s grades and bring their concerns to the teachers at any moment to brainstorm solutions. 

4. Promotes involvement of the community

It becomes easier for the school staff to organize and host events with the use of applications. They can inform the parents about them and entertain their concerns on the app. They can also spread the word about events better.

Mobile applications make it easier for everyone in the community simply because they are convenient and easy to access. People are not as likely to miss notifications or messages on their mobile as they would be to miss letters and circulars.

5. Saves you time and money

It may seem counterintuitive that maintaining and managing an application regularly saves you money and time, but it is true. It serves multiple functions in one place and streamlines processes in the long run. You can save so much time by ensuring effective and speedy communication. 

For example, instead of printing newsletters, you can simply make them available on your app. It allows easier navigation than a physical newspaper. It also allows users to save stories to read later.

Again if you consider the school websites, they take a lot of time to load and open up. While an app takes less time to download and is much faster. It is an easier substitute to a website and ensures a single click access to most information. 

Managing aspects such as attendance is also easier digitally. You can track students’ records and analyze them to present insights into their performance. Not only do you save time, effort, and money, but you also take a step toward a paperless society with your school app. 

About School Mobile Apps

Having an online presence is a must in the digital age, apps simply help you create a functioning one for your school.

They are a boon as classes are held in an online setting. Moreover, they serve various other purposes such as opening communication channels between teachers, students, and parents.

People can stay up-to-date with the happenings of the school, clear their doubts, and voice their opinions conveniently with the use of applications. They give them a chance to contribute to the community.

For the longest time, websites for schools and educational institutions were more or less a place to put all the basic information about it. They were rarely a functional tool in the school’s arsenal that could help them much. 

With the rise of online teaching in the wake of the pandemic, websites are more important than ever in 2022.

Today, they are flexible, agile platforms that keep everyone from pupils to their parents in the loop and enhance the learning experience of students.

Let’s find out what wonders having a functioning website can do for your school.

Your school website — an essential marketing tool 

In the age of the internet, everything is online — people, businesses, offices — you name it. Your school website is often going to be the first contact people make with your school. Anyone who is interested in it would be going to the website to learn more about your school.

The website is an essential marketing tool to help you create a noteworthy first impression. You can immediately draw potential pupils and their parents by making enrollment easier. They can connect with you as well as learn more about you in detail.

As a website makes it easier to contact you, it directly impacts your admissions. It also helps in running the school and keeps existing students in the loop.

Benefits of having a school website 

Having a website for your school is a necessity now. It offers many, many benefits in the digital age. Here are some of the most prominent ones to consider:

Showcase your school online 

Websites are a virtually endless space to showcase your school’s accomplishments in a permanent way. Whatever your school has achieved — be it trophies or smiling students — it can be front and centre on your website.

It creates an immediate impact on the visitor. More importantly, It creates transparency about what a day in the life of your school looks like. You can connect with your community and show them what your school excels at.

Implement a long-term marketing shift

Many traditional schools are understandably intimidated by the idea of creating an online presence. Your website can be the first step in that direction. Social media, blogs, and newsletters can come after you get the hang of running the website.

In fact, your website is what every social media post and blog post would link back to. It helps in creating a seamless marketing shift to the online space.

Attract new students or prospective parents

Often being the first point of contact for potential students, websites play a huge role in attracting them to your school. They can see and understand what your school is like and if it is something they would like to be a part of. 

They can also research extensively and clear their doubts before they apply for enrollment, something that may not be that effective in physical settings. 

Allows open communication 

Users can find exactly what they are looking for on your website. You can initiate open, honest communication with them on topics of their interest. You may dedicate a page for forums where your community can interact in a transparent way with each other. 

Hire the right staff

Websites don’t just help you attract prospective students, they also help you hire better. People wanting to apply for various positions in your institution will get to know it through your website. It will give them. A glimpse of what working with you will be like. 

Way forward 

School websites are growing into a more functional role with the rise of online teaching. A practical website can not only be a showcase of what your school stands for, but also help in enhancing the learning experience of students as a whole. 

The way forward is to keep enhancing the websites to be helpful tools for the school, its pupils, and their parents. Focus on providing a comprehensive experience to the users and frequently updating the website to keep everyone in the loop. 

Just a few seconds into a website and people start judging. 

There are a lot of factors that you can monitor and improve overtime to get the most value from your school website. Among them are design, load time, content, navigation, and graphics..

If you are not happy with the current performance of the website, you may have already started researching ways that can improve your website. If that’s your story, you are at the right place.

Read on to know 6 key strategies that will help you get more value from your school website.

1. Go superior web design mode

Remember, the first impression does matter. 94 percent of the first website impressions are shaped by design. 

Website users make split-second judgments about your school, based purely on the appearance of its website. 

To stay up with the continuously changing expectations of modern-day website visitors and provide a seamless experience, aim to rebuild your website every three years. Stay fresh to stay young and attractive!

2.   Be mobile-friendly

While making your website visually appealing is vital, ensuring that the design shows up well on mobile devices is also important. These days, most websites receive roughly 50-60% of their overall traffic from mobile devices. It should therefore be your priority to opt for a mobile-first design.

If you are unsure whether to invest in a mobile-friendly website design, check the following data:

• A bad smartphone web browsing experience made 52 percent of users feel less likely to engage with a website.
• If a site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, consumers are 5X more likely to quit the platform.
• When visiting sites that aren’t mobile-friendly, 48% of users report feeling annoyed and disappointed.

3.   Ensure quicker load time

Today’s average web surfer expects all websites to load fast. As it stands, your site’s performance is a big factor to consider and improve if you wish to get the most value from your school website. 

As a general rule of thumb, if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 47 percent of visitors are likely to abandon it. 

The size of photos you use on your website can significantly affect the site’s load time. The way and where your website is hosted also plays an important role in website load time.

4.   Navigation should be simple

The way your school website’s pages and content are organized can have a big impact on its success. 

Websites with the right navigation structure will ensure that browsing through them makes sense for the average user. 

Here, your focus should be to provide a simple and enjoyable user experience, in order to ensure lower bounce rates and higher engagement.

5.   Make it search engine friendly

If you want your school website to show up ahead of your competitors on the search engine result pages, you better invest in SEO or search engine optimization strategies. 

While this particular strategy may not directly relate to the website experience, ensuring that your site is search engine optimized will ensure that your potential clients can locate you on the web. 

Even if you have the best school website in the world, it won’t matter if no one can discover you.

6.   Engaging and informative content

While an attractive design might entice visitors to stay on your site, it is the information and how you present it that ultimately helps you sell your message. Focus on the following two types of content on a website:

• Visual: Photos, graphic components, videos, and infographics are examples of visual content.
• Written: Calls to action, news, blogs, etc.

Remember, today’s internet visitors scan their screens rather than reading thoroughly, especially if they’re on a mobile device. Make sure you design your content appropriately.

We believe that the tips we have listed above will help you get more value from your school website and also help improve its functionality.

Your school website is the primary source of information regarding everything for parents, students, and future employees.  As a web design company one of the most common things you are expected to hear when taking up a school website design project is that it should be ‘easy to navigate’. 

But the most common question here is how do we create a site that is ‘easy to navigate’? Let’s explore a few things you need to take care of when designing the navigation structure of your site. 

 

1. Keep the design simple

As a designer it’s totally fine to come up with unique designs that can pleasantly surprise the users. But it is always safe to play safe with the navigation structure. If the users take too long to figure out what to do next — for example, struggling to locate the search button or figure out the Submit button for the Donation program — chances are they will abandon your site never to return again. 

2. Restrict the number of choices

When users look at your site menu, they should be able to easily skim through all the options available on your site. If users are overwhelmed with too many options and they’re not able to make a choice, their only option would be to leave your site. Hence it is recommended that you stick to eight or fewer menu options when designing your site. In case you have a number of buttons available, restrict yourself to include only three or four buttons. If the other departments force their choice on including every single detail on the header, take a firm stand. 

3. Limit the number of clicks 

When designing the site navigation, make sure to use dropdown menus under the main navigation menu. This will help the users to directly navigate to the page of their choice. The best part is that the users will also be able to navigate to a section that may be nested deep within without clicking on every single page. Another popular way of organizing the navigation structure of your site is by using a hamburger or navicon menu on the desktop that emphasizes the key items on the site. With this design structure, users find it easier to locate the deeply nested pages by simply hovering over the main page menu. 

4. Be consistent 

Your visitors, especially ones with disabilities, expect your site to be predictable. If the navigation is consistent across the site, it makes it easier for everyone to locate specific items within the navigation structure. When designing the navigation structure of your site, make sure you use menus and other navigation mechanisms that are consistent across all the pages. With items that are repeated in the same relative order ensure that you place the menus in the same place on every page. 

5. Ensure mobile accessibility

While designing the site, you need to make sure users are able to access all the pages, including the deeply nested ones, as easily on their mobile phones as their desktops. The most important aspect of working on a mobile-friendly navigation is to work with a company that understands the mobile-first design. This is important as the designer needs to take the different device experiences into consideration while working on the layout and navigation. 

6. Offer guidance to the users 

To make your site navigation successful, make sure you offer enough guidance by including featured links that you would like the users to visit. Including clear call-to-action instructions throughout the site works really well when you want users to take any predefined action, such as submitting a form or clicking a link to explore more.

To sum up 

Understandably, the requirements for each school are different. There are additional considerations that need to be taken care of by the design team while deciding on the navigation structure of the school website. We believe that following the guidelines mentioned above will be a great starting point for you. 

If you manage a school website, by now you will be aware of the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO not only helps to improve the quantity of traffic to your school website but also the quality of your website.  People however seem to have a common misconception that school websites do not require SEO and it is more relevant for other institutions and organisations. However, if you look at the search data, you would easily disapprove of this fact. 

With 3.5 billion searches made everyday, it can be safely concluded that these search trends should not be ignored. But the question is — is it possible to constantly keep up with these search trends and frequently update your website? 

The simple answer is yes, if you intend not to hurt your organic traffic.  Search trends help you understand and deliver the most effective and user-friendly content for each of your queries. A robust SEO optimisation strategy takes time to show results and when it does, you will be able to reap its benefits for years to come. 

1. Utilise location-based search strategy

Google My Business (the listing on Google search that shows your location and contact details) was created with the intention of helping customers engage on Google for free. The primary objective was to help small and medium-scale businesses connect with their potential customers across Google Searches and Maps. 

For most schools, the common statement is, “Everyone knows my school, why do I need this?”

But the fact is optimising Google My Business shows your school name up on the search even when a user doesn’t know you exist. 

For example, a parent who is new in the area where your school is situated, might simply key in the phrase, ‘best high school + location in the search engine. For that parent to find your school, you need to be on the Page 1 search results. And we very well know from historical data that very few people visit the second page. Having an up-to-date Google My Business listing can assist with this.

Another significant point to be noted here — Google detects the searchers’ location from the IP address. Even if you don’t include your region in the search, it will automatically deliver them local results including Google My Business listings… 

2. Comprehend the search intent for educational institutions 

Most search engine users these days are impatient. If they want their search to include specific results, they will use the related long-tail keywords. Now the real challenge is understanding those keywords and search terms so you can optimise your school website accordingly. 

In other words, the more content you have on your website that is related to the search term, the better are your site’s chances of ranking higher in the search results. 

3. Optimise for different regions 

It’s not just enough that your GMB account and site pages include only results for the physical location where you are situated. 

Some parents who have not entered your location in their search will not be able to find your school and they may not even be aware that you are already pulling students from their areas. This holds true for most schools that are located outside main cities and towns. 

What you need here is a regional landing page strategy. 

The most common approach to creating regional landing pages are highlighted below: 

• Define the targeted area

You need to start by defining the area that you are targeting whether it is a specific region, city, county, etc. Then mention the key landmarks or work a bit into the history of the region. 

• Geo-specific keywords 

This is in fact the most important point to consider when you are creating a location-based landing page that will specifically give you the local hits you need from your local population. The formula is quite simple — mention [type of school] in [region or location] or [location] in the content you have on your website. 

For example, 

• Primary school in North London 
• North Yorkshire secondary school 

• Consistency 

Irrespective of whether you are creating one landing page or 10, the look and feel as well the style and tone of each page should be consistent. If you are a larger institution, it’s a good idea to come up with a style guide with specific branding colours and guidelines. 

4. On-page optimisation 

This is the process of doing everything on your website that could help to instruct Google to deliver you to page one. You should take on-page quite seriously if you want the search engines to reward you with the first page visibility. 

Let’s take a look at some of the best practises you may want to follow in your quest to rank on the first page:

• URLs: Google has very clearly stated that URLs help them understand what the page is all about. In order to optimise the URLs: 
  • Include the primary keyword in the URL
  • Place the keyword to the left side of the URL
  • Keep the words that define the URL as real as possible
  • Keep the text simple and sweet
  • Use hyphens between two words 

• Meta titles and descriptions:  Page titles are one of the most important on-page SEO factors. Both the meta title and description are important for the search engines to understand the purpose of the page. 
• Header tags: These tags serve an important function for the SEO of your page. They have a direct impact on your page by:
  • Making it easier and more enjoyable for your users to read the page
  • Providing keyword-rich context to the search engines for your content
• SEO writing: This typically implies that the content is written in a way that it is loved by both humans and the search engines. 
• Keyword cannibalisation: Targeting many pages for a specific keyword can cause keyword cannibalisation and that could have potentially disastrous results for your SEO efforts. If you have multiple pages on your website ranking for the same keyword, you’re actually competing with yourself and that’s not a good on-page strategy to follow. 
• Content audit: This is a vital mistake made by most content authors and editors. They keep on creating new content, but never bother to revisit or update their existing content. It’s absolutely essential to do content audits on a regular basis. 

5. Mobile page loading speed 

In the real world, speed kills but it is not the same in the digital world. If your page doesn’t load fast on your mobile, the internet will kill your rank. 

Waiting for a page to load in its own sweet time is a frustrating experience. There are quite a few ways to reverse this experience:

• Utilise the wide range of free marketing tools available to make quick fixes to your content. There are a few tools that can compress images to a fraction of their size. 
• Limit the amount of media you include in your posts and pages. To ensure optimal page load speed, you should maintain a ratio of 75:25 for text to images. 
• Make sure you have a prominent call to action (CTA) and the size of the CTA button should be at least a bit larger than your thumb. 

Final thoughts

SEO like anything else requires the right amount of knowledge, skills, patience, and consistency to produce the desired results. The opportunities are unlimited and as the search engine volumes grow, it will become more important than ever to keep working on your SEO efforts.

Does your school still use a paper-based diary to maintain the important dates and events? 

Understandably, shifting from old-school traditions takes time but if your school is not taking advantage of paperless solutions, such as an online calendar, it truly is missing out on opportunities to save valuable time. 

An online calendar is a significant tool that helps in not only keeping your diary organised but also makes communication easier and streamlines existing processes to make them more efficient. 

If that got you interested in using an online calendar, then take some time to go through the significant benefits listed below. 

1. It is sustainable 

With constant updates and communication around climate change, a sense of awareness has been created about being more responsible towards being sustainable and eco-friendly. It makes all the more sense to move away from paper-based solutions and adopt paperless solutions. 

Online calendars work best in reducing the digital footprint of your organisation as well as paper wastage. 

2. It is secured

A physical diary is always exposed to security threats owing to its nature of being portable and vulnerable. You might easily lose it or damage it, and there is no chance of it having a backup. 

With an online calendar, these challenges do not surface at all. You can easily link an online calendar to your email and also password protect it at all times. The best part is you can easily back it up on cloud to avoid any loss of data. 

3. It helps you save time 

With a physical diary, you have to keep on adding the meetings and events as and when they happen, else you might forget to appear at the right time. 

However, with an online calendar, you can save plenty of time by creating an event once and setting it up on a daily, monthly, or weekly basis by changing just a few settings. Also, if you have attendees for your meeting, they will get automatic updates if the meeting is cancelled or the dates are modified.

4. It is easy to coordinate

In the new normal of remote working, if you had to physically collate appointments from the calendars of different people, it could turn out to be a really tiring job and even more so if these people are working out of different locations. 

An online calendar is very convenient for the simple fact that it can be accessed from any location in the world and by anyone who needs access to that information. 

5. It integrates with other platforms

The best thing about an online calendar is that it can very well integrate with other platforms of your school, such as your school website and mobile app. 

If you would like the parents or students to access your online calendar, you can simply sync it with your internal system and the information available on your calendar will be made public. They will easily be able to see the dates of online events and other necessary information they need to access anytime. 

6. It enhances your productivity levels

Besides all other benefits, you can use an online calendar to boost your productivity levels. 

You can block dedicated slots in your calendar to complete the priority tasks within that time slot. You can either block time to complete an urgent school project or have dedicated one-on-one sessions with your students or other school members. 

Blocking slots also ensures that others do not send any meeting invites during that time or disturbs you with any unnecessary interventions. 

Conclusion

As you can see from the points mentioned above, an online calendar doesn’t just enable you to schedule your online events and meetings, but also acts as a time-saver and productivity enhancer. 

Start using an online calendar today to save your valuable time for handling the most critical functions of your business. If managing an online calendar is your only worry, then you can definitely take the help of School Jotter. 

The pandemic has disrupted everything in day-to-day life, schooling is no exception. With having to deal with so much at the moment when it comes to matters in and outside school, maintaining communication with parents can potentially take a backseat.

Effective communication with parents is especially important during these uncertain times and should not be neglected. It helps keep parents in the loop and their anxieties at bay. It lets them know the school cares just as much about their child’s well-being. 

Most importantly, when parents are well-informed of the happenings of the school, they can rest assured that the school is well-equipped to help the students adapt to the new post-pandemic lifestyle. In fact, they would be willing to contribute to it as well.

What are the options of communication channels? 

Thanks to the boom in technological resources, especially after the pandemic, there are several communication channels available. You have texts, emails, letters, and circulars for formal communication. The school website acts as a notice board of sorts as well. 

Then there’s the informal method of group chat and phone calls for urgent messages. Lastly, there are software and apps that act as an exclusive internal system solely focussed on information sharing.

Pick a few, not all

You can pick whichever option you like but don’t pick all. It’s simply a waste of your energy and redundant for the parent. They may even miss an important message or two thinking they are repeated messages if they keep receiving the same message on every channel. 

The ideal way to go about this would be to pick two or three channels at most. If the parent misses the message on one channel, they will receive it on the other. Make sure they are not similar channels as that would diminish the effectiveness.

Say, if they miss the message on the app, there is a chance they may also miss it on text as both are mostly viewed on mobile phones. Thus, the second channel of communication should be something like email or letters. Letters are received personally, and emails can be viewed on desktops and tablets as well.

Make sure the message is received 

Effective communication is a two-way street. You should strive to be available for the parents at all times. They should be able to reach out to you, clear any doubts they may have, and ask questions. This can be tricky given everyone’s busy schedules, but it is essential to make sure they are on the same page as you. 

Make sure they have understood a message, not just received it. Perhaps they can respond with something like ‘understood’ upon receiving any update. It automatically opens up the way for them to ask questions if they have any. 

Additionally, opt for shorter messages delivered more frequently instead of longer occasional ones. It’s easier to pay attention and respond to shorter messages and frequent communication creates a better sense of being in the loop.

Encourage input from parents

46% of parents say that they wish to support their child’s education better. They truly are interested in being active partners in their children’s education should they get the proper ways to do so.

To make them feel invited, begin by personalising your messages to them. Establish a positive and inviting tone with your messages. Invite their input but don’t force them into it.

Ask them about their child’s strengths and weaknesses. Ask them what kind of a support system they think their child needs, and how you can provide it to the child. 

Final words

Schools have come a long way in improving communication with parents, aided well by technological advancements. The next challenge lies in involving parents as equal partners in their children’s education. 

Providing effective communication to the parents makes them feel like a part of a team with educators. Parents are willing to do their part. The focus should be on building relationships between educators and parents and personalising the communication. 

We all know that smartphones have taken over our lives, but did you know that 87% of the UK population used a smartphone in 2020 and the smartphone to population penetration was 72%? 

With those numbers, it can only make sense for your school to take advantage of this to help increase parental engagement. But how exactly can this be done?

A mobile app for your secondary school could be the perfect solution, getting key messages out to parents, whilst also helping your school to run more efficiently and reduce costs. 

How do school apps enhance communication for secondary schools? 

With a school mobile app, you can significantly improve the quality of communication between your school and parents or guardians. If you do not have a robust communication strategy in place, chances are you will not be able to deliver superior-quality communication. 

Here are a few ways in which you can work on your communication process with a school app:

• Simplify the onboarding process

   — For an app to be successful, you need to make sure as many parents and guardians as possible use it. With our school app, you can onboard parents easily. We offer full training to your staff so they can confidently help parents to get the most out of it.

• Reduce admin time

  — Using a digital solution to communicate with parents and guardians means there is a huge drop in additional costs from traditional communication methods, like printed newsletters and updates. It also saves a lot of time for your staff.

• Provide access to an integrated booking form for events and open days

  — you can save a huge amount of admin time alone with integrative bookings. Allow teachers to set their availability for parents evenings and open days, and parents can book a lot direct. 

• Offer better targeted communication

  — You can send messages to those parents who have not responded to earlier messages, and thereby ramp up the engagement levels. Being able to know which parents have received or read your messages, further enables you to understand how active or engaged they are on the app. Accordingly, you can contact them when they come to the school to pick up their children or set an appointment. 

Let’s consider the next question. 

How does a school app help you save costs? 

Here is a quick look at some of the cost-saving benefits that are offered by a school app: 

• Saves on printing costs

  — There is a lot of paper used in the UK schools on a daily basis. Having a school communication app can boost your green credentials and make your journey towards a paperless future easier than ever. 

• Saves administration efforts

  — Relying on students to pass on paper notes to their parents and then have the parents communicate with the school authorities can be a really cumbersome process. With a school app, there will not be any wasted communication with the parents. 

If you too are considering a mobile application for your school, try School Jotter. Here are a few features offered by the app that are worth considering:

• Editable app

  — Schools can personalise their dashboard, adding and removing links relevant to the time of year

• Custom design

  — It pushes the school’s brand and ethos, no boring template look

• Syncs with website

  — It seamlessly integrates with the school website and helps to prevent any duplication of work and reduces workload

That brings us to our next question. 

Why should you consider the School Jotter app?

Check out some of the key benefits here:

• Mobile centre enables you to contact and be contacted by individuals or groups of parents at no cost
• Get access to the latest news, updates, and information delivered to your mobile at no extra cost
• Add links to school policies and other important information.
• Save money with push notifications over a text service that needs to be topped up
• Syncs with website to prevent any duplication of work and reduces workload

Now if that has convinced you enough, contact our friendly professionals today at School Jotter and enable the parents and students to make the most from their School Jotter mobile school app.  

Multi-academy trust (MAT) websites play an integral role in establishing the online presence of the schools they are associated with. The website provides crucial information regarding the trust and the new schools that can join the Trust. 

One of the major benefits of a new school joining a Trust is that they get to be a part of a beautiful website that reflects their critical part in making the Trust successful. 

Before we gain further understanding into what makes a great MAT website, let’s understand some of the benefits it can bring to a MAT:

• They guide the public perception of the MAT and their schools as authoritative and authentic sources
• They identify each school as a member
• They act as a source of information for the visitors from a trusted referral link
• They help to maintain consistency in design across multiple schools
• They are able to complete the design and development of the subsequent websites quite easily
• They prove to be cost-effective for MATs that would like to have a group of sites for their different schools

With an increasing number of Trusts willing to expand their services and make people aware of the advantages and benefits they have to offer, it becomes all the more important to make your Trust stand out from others. There are several ways to achieve this goal, but the best way would be to start with your Trust website.

Here are a few factors you may want to consider before revisiting your Trust’s website design: 

1. Offer an amazing visual experience 

People find it easier to connect with sites that help them navigate the site easily and access information, which is otherwise difficult to find.

There are plenty of styles that would suit the objective that your Trust wants to establish in the market, from professional photography to animated illustrations and video backgrounds. These all can be featured cohesively on your website to convey the brand and vision of your Trust. 

2. Deliver an outstanding user experience 

User experience plays an integral role in a MAT website. People will always remember experiences that saved them valuable time and access information without any hassle. 

Some of the user experience elements can look really trivial but you will be greatly surprised at how these are often ignored in the design stage. Also, it can be really frustrating for a user to navigate endlessly through the website to find one piece of useful information.

3. Represent the brand of your Trust on the web

Your personal brand has a great impact on every aspect of your organization. It dictates how the vision, personality, and values of the trust are communicated to its stakeholders. 

In fact, people will remember your Trust for a long time if the website is able to reflect the values and beliefs of your trust rather than just simple information.

To ensure you’re fully representing your brand, there are key pieces of information you should always have on your Trust website, including

• CEO and Leaderships team bios
• Information on member schools, including links to case studies and websites
• Your Trust USPs, values and ethos
• Latest news – what’s happening at your Trust right now?
• Recruitment information for both new schools and staff – with all of the great design work you’ve done and the way you’ve represented your brand, who wouldn’t want to join your Trust?

4. Adopt good social media practices 

Search engines are not the only way through which people will be able to find your website. In order to gain maximum exposure for your Trust, you should also have a prominent social media presence. And for that, you need to create a robust social media content strategy for people to find you on the web. 

5. Gain positive ranking through SEO

You can have the most beautiful website and the simplest of navigation, but it will be of no use if people are not able to find your Trust’s website. And Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will increase the possibility of your website appearing in the search results. 

 

Conclusion 

As mentioned earlier, there could be a thousand ways to make a great MAT website, but the most successful will be the one that is able to tell a unique story and make a great first impression. 

Remember that great design is not just about incorporating pretty on-screen elements, rather it is about making sure your design is accessible and offers a great user experience. This will also help in a better understanding of your MAT brand. 

The team at School Jotter has worked with dozens of MATs to create a range of great website experiences. Get in touch if you’d like to find out more.