Since the pandemic, visits to schools for prospective families have been minimized.  These might continue again in the future, but there may still be many people who are wary of visiting lots of schools in their local area.

Rather than visiting schools, families are now deciding on the potential school for their child: predominantly online. It’s no surprise that your website has to do the heavy lifting when it comes to communicating the value of your school.

Photographs and videography are the first impressions a school can make on its potential suitability for families and students.  

Visuals are hard-wired into our brains as humans. People are 55% more likely to remember information when it is paired with the related image. Research shows we process images 60,000 times faster than text. What do you think of first when I say “Tesla”, not its features but the car itself (or in the same cases, I made you remember Elon Musk!)

If you want to make a strong first impression and create a deeper emotional impact; hiring a professional photographer is a necessity. 

You have to accept the fact that your school is a brand which attracts the right families. Photography and videography can assist in getting your message out to them!

We spend a lot of money creating quality education for students, meet-ups, and professional training for teachers and mentors. Why do we overlook to showcase the value we contribute to the lives of our students?

Here are three important reasons to quit wasting your time and opt for professional photography and videography right away!

 

1. Photography showcases authenticity

We know the Friday drawing classes are for creativity and fun. And, students love each bit of it. A trained photographer, like a trained teacher, will do their best to get that message across. They will help you capture the natural spirit of the school and facilities. Moreover, a photographer who is used to working with kids, has the right skills to make them feel comfortable and at ease.

It’s a great way to show prospective families how much students and teachers love their time together. Instead of telling them in three long paragraphs about the quality of life you provide for your students, it would be more effective if they could see it in a one-minute video!

 

2. It easily demonstrate your values

Photographs and videos not only “showcase” the activities students and teachers are doing, but they will also demonstrate how happy students “feel” while doing those activities.

It will help you capture their excitement, as well as the bond they have with their teachers or classmates. This simple image will demonstrate the ambience of your school!

Pro-tip: Most photographers avoid shooting on special occasions. Doing a shoot on teacher’s day, for example, would not be the best choice. Since it will not help them capture students their true selves.

 

3. Photographs will help you tell the story of your school

When you think about your own school, What is the first thing you remember? The classroom, the building right? Because places hold history.

Every school and campus is different and has a unique story to tell. Whether your school has that one wall painted in blue or its culture is centered around history or modern art. What makes it stand out?

Photography and videography will evoke the personality of the school. This a low key method of demonstrating how the faculty and students are part of this unique environment. It will always remain part of their personal history. 

Pro-Tip (part 2): Photographs are not only a vital aspect of your website, but they also play a role in your branding. Documents, newsletters, invitations, and school events should all have the same brand consistency.

 

We’ve learned the value of professional photography. Now, the next step is to find the right photographer for the job.

And, let’s be honest, this could be quite a bit of a task. Finding a talented photographer that can accurately capture the soul of your institution, meet your deadlines, and stay inside your budget is no easy task! 

You can go through 1000 portfolios and spend your valuable time figuring out the right photographer. Or you can ask our experts at School Jotter!

Being an educational organization and having designed and delivered over 6,500 school websites to our customers, we are committed to find the best fit for your school.

Reach out to us today for your school’s brighter future tomorrow!

Did you know it takes about 0.05 seconds for a user to determine whether they choose to stay on, or leave your website? You heard it right! 

Though it’s a common saying, “do not judge a book by its cover”, when it comes to your website design, it is almost always subjected to an extreme level of snap judgment that may influence any perceptions of credibility.

If you are new to website design or are unsure about what will make an impact and help to increase parental engagement for your school’s website, here are some basic design mistakes that you should avoid.

 

1. Using stock photos

Photography is one of the most critical elements of good school website design. Using stock photos or bad quality images can dramatically impact the value associated with your school website. If you intend to use stock photos at all, then make sure they are of high quality and realistically express the emotions you have in mind.

2. Too many menu items

Researchers have concluded that when too many menus or options are given to users, the human mind tends to get confused and is not able to take the required action. Not something you want to happen with your school website.

For example, if your website has too many menus on multiple parts of your web page or multiple dropdowns under each heading, it is less likely that your user, in this case, the students or parents, will find the information they need. In such cases, the user will quickly skim through the menus or sections and will immediately leave the page if they cannot locate the appropriate information.

Related to menu items, there is another design mistake that often needs the designer’s attention — invisible navigation menus. If the visual cues are missing from the breadcrumbs, your user may struggle to find where exactly they are on the website or where they want to go next.  

 

3. Long pages

A school website serves many audiences — alumni, teachers, current parents, students, and prospective parents. The competing needs of the different types of audience compel many schools to overload their website with too much information that often extends to several pages and needs to be scrolled to access the complete information. This often leads to the parents missing out on critical information and causing a lot of confusion.

When building pages on your website, you need to use the most relevant and important information that must be conveyed and offer an option to either download a PDF for more information or contact the school to have queries resolved.

 

4. Keeping old / no longer relevant content

Continuing from the above point, keeping content that could be archived is one critical mistake website admins often make.  Content should be focused primarily on the current requirements of the target audience. Other information, for example, news and updates dating back several years, doesn’t hold relevance for current parents and should be removed and updated from time to time. 

 

5. Not being mobile responsive

According to Statista, until January 2021, the total number of active mobile internet users in the UK was approximately 65.32 million.

The most common mistake made by many designers is that they design a school website keeping in mind only the desktop version and bringing in the mobile version as an afterthought. Clearly, if you do not design a website keeping the mobile view in mind, you’re definitely ignoring a major portion of the audience and site traffic.

Instead, you should evenly weigh your desktop and mobile view considerations from the start of the project, this will definitely improve the user experience on your school website. Even the new mobile-friendly algorithm from Google provides an additional boost in your website rankings if it is mobile-friendly.

 

6. An old design

School website design has moved on a lot in the last few years. Ordinary home pages are oh-so-boring and outdated. Some designers also make the mistake of working on the design and the website copy separately. Designing the website first or creating the copy? This is kind of that world’s chicken and egg kind of question — who came first?

When looking for a design, make sure you choose something that stays relevant to the times and choose a theme template that has a modern look and feel. Making the site effective is more important than just focusing on the beauty aspect of the site. Text-heavy pages are a big no-no and over usage of graphics isn’t recommended either.

Another advantage of modern themes is that they also come with user-friendly navigation which helps both the parents and students to easily access information without worrying about what to click next.

 

7. Image resolutions too high or too low

Photos or images are an integral part of the website design process but if the image resolution is too high or too low, that can have an opposite impact on the user experience. 

When uploading images to your site, you should always look at the pixel dimensions. For a horizontal image, you should use at least 1024 pixels and the standard resolution for web images, also known as screen resolution, should be 72PPI. 

 

8. Too many images in slideshows

You might have seen many websites that have attractive images as slide shows or carousels, they might look really appealing, but they can detract from the crucial information you want your website users to find.

The Usability Guru, Jakob Nielsen, performed a test on a couple of users where he asked them to spot a particular deal on washing machines which was mentioned in one of the most prominent slides on a site – due to the number of slideshow images, most of the users missed that information. Thereafter, he concluded that image carousels get ignored. Notre Dame also performed a similar test and the result got them 1% action only on the first slide.

Even in the case of school websites, parents or students really do not have sufficient time to scroll through hundreds of images to find one specific piece of information. 

 

9. Avoid bright or hard to read colors for text

As rightly said by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, “The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”

Some of the most common accessibility mistakes that you can make when choosing a website design include background and font colour combinations, not providing a visual focus on certain elements on the website, missing alt text on images, or including link text that does not provide sufficient detail.

When you choose your next website design, pick a company that has incorporated web accessibility in its platform.

 

10. Overuse of scrolling text and animations

When the question of adding animations to website design comes, contemporary users like you might instantly like the idea of seeing some movement on the website and hence adding animations. Now if the animations are user-triggered then it does a good job in bringing in the desired impact. But using too many animations or movements could negatively impact the functionality of the website by slowing it down, and especially so when you open it on your mobile devices.

Again, additional and unintentional horizontal scrollbars that often pop up in otherwise responsive websites can also ruin the look and feel of the website and can slow it down tremendously.

 

Final thoughts

While designing a school website, it is critical to always keep your target audience and brand image in mind in every step of the design process. If you can reconcile the two, you will have a beautiful product that will be loved by all.

Designing a school website or any other educational software undoubtedly requires thorough expertise and relevant experience and with School Jotter guiding you every step of the way, you can get your website or app up in no time. Contact us right away to discuss how we can help you bring your vision to life.

Ensuring your school’s website is mobile-friendly is more important than ever for the new academic year.  But what does that actually mean, why does it matter and how can you get it for your school?

What is a mobile-friendly website?

Making your site-mobile friendly simply means ensuring that your existing website will shrink down when it’s viewed on a mobile-device, e.g. a smartphone or tablet. All important information, contact info, key pages, images and even videos or animations, should be easily readable in this smaller format, and your design should translate well to mobile too.

Why is a mobile-friendly website important for schools?

More searches on mobile:

With searches on mobile devices having overtaken desktop for many years now, you want to make sure that all-important information about your school, whether for existing parents, or potential new families, is all available with ease.

Visibility on search engines:

For the last few years Google’s search algorithms have given great prominence to sites which are mobile-friendly, so a mobile-friendly web design could mean you appear higher in search results. This could be particularly important at this time of year, as parents are potentially looking for schools to send their children to. 

How can I check if my school’s website is mobile-friendly?

Google’s own Mobile-Friendly Test is the quickest and easiest way to see if Google considers your web design to be suitable for mobile users. You simply enter your web address, and within a few moments Google will run a test on your site and present you with your results. Your website will be determined to be mobile-friendly (or not) and you will be given additional resources and information to learn more about the subject.

In addition to this it’s also worth taking a look at the website yourself on your own device, and consider, can you see and read all of your important information clearly.

What if my school failed the mobile-friendly test?

At this stage it’s important for you to speak to your website developers. If you haven’t had a new design for several years, then you should seriously consider investing in one to help make it easier for parents to see all the good things your school does.

Depending on the complexity of the design you want, a new website can take anywhere from just a few days, to several months to complete, but moving forwards, you should have a website that is much more accessible for more people.

If you’d like to find out more about a mobile-friendly website for your school

Our team of experts would be happy to help.  Contact us and a member of our team will call you back.

Since 23rd of September 2020 all schools should have implemented the accessibility requirements for public sector body websites, detailed in the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No.2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

If you’re not sure your school’s website and mobile app meets these accessibility requirements it can sound like a daunting task to address. But it really needn’t be, read on to find out more.

What are the requirements for?

Simply put, the requirements are there to make sure that your website is accessible for as many people as possible, including those with impaired vision, motor difficulties, cognitive impairments or learning difficulties, deafness, or impaired hearing.

If you’ve already worked through and met each and every Principle in the international WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standard, then your content will already be considered accessible, but what do you need to ensure you have done if not?

Meeting the requirements

Full guidance on everything you need to put into practice can be found in the Government’s guidance on understanding accessibility requirements for public sector websites and apps, but there are some key highlights:

• Ensure that there are alternatives for non-text content, for example ‘alt text’ descriptions on images
• Provide text transcripts for audio and provide captions for video
• Make sure your content is structured logically and can be navigated by a screen reader
• Use text colours that can be read clearly against the background colour
• Ensure your content is easy to read and in ‘plain English’, with short sentences
• Make sure every feature can be used at increased font sizes up to 200% and ensure that text flows into a single column when it’s increased by 400%
• Ensure your website design isn’t restricted to a specific display orientation, e.g. landscape – a responsive website should ensure that this isn’t the case

 

What else do you need to be aware of?

Primary and secondary schools, plus nurseries are partially exempt from the accessibility guidelines, so there are some things you might not need to fix, including:

• Pre-recorded video recorded audio and video published before 23 September 2020
• Live audio and video
• PDFs or other documents published before September 2020 – unless users need them to use a service, for example a form that lets you request school meal preferences
• Maps – but you’ll need to provide essential information in an accessible format, such as an address
• Third party content that’s under someone else’s control if you did not pay for it or develop it yourself

Full guidance on exemptions can be found under the Government’s guidelines.

What about an accessibility statement?

An accessibility statement is an essential for partially exempt organisations and handily there is a sample accessibility statement within the guidance, which you can copy and complete for your school’s website.

If you’re looking for a new school website that can help you to meet the latest accessibility guidelines then please get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.

With the introduction of technology into the classroom over the last few decades education has changed dramatically – and never as dramatically as seen over the last year due to the pandemic. For centuries education was fairly rigid; we attended school each day, were given topics to learn by rote and then tested on our skills of retaining that information via exams. All that changed when computers entered classrooms and new ways of learning were explored, such as e-learning online.
Over the last year you have likely heard many terms banded around, especially ‘hybrid’ and ‘blended’ learning – oftentimes they’re used as one and the same, which is definitely not the case. But what are these new ways of learning, how do they differ from one another, how can they impact your teaching, and more importantly your students’ education? 

What Is Hybrid Learning?

As the name suggests, hybrid learning is a combination of more traditional face-to-face education coupled with offline and distance learning techniques. The combination finds the balance of face-to-face and online techniques to ensure the content meets student needs and maximises learning. For example, a five class a week course would meet once face-to-face and the remaining four classes a mix of distance learning such as e-learning online, online assignments or a Zoom lecture.

What Is Blended Learning? 

Blended learning is the mix of both online and offline – using online instruction as a way to supplement or support traditional face-to-face learning, but not replace it. For example, a five class a week course would meet five times face-to-face but the educator would supplement the learning with online assignments. 

Hybrid vs Blended: The Differences

As we previously mentioned the terms ‘hybrid’ and ‘blended’ are oftentimes used as one and the same, mainly because the subtleties between them are fine. While blended learning focuses on the combination of offline and online instruction with a lean toward face-to-face, hybrid learning seeks to find a balance that ensures the best experience for students needs via any possible learning technique. 

The Benefits Of Both Hybrid and Blended Learning

Due to the similarities of both learning styles and the offering of online interaction the benefits are also similar. The main benefits of blended and hybrid learning are:

• Accessibility 
• Flexibility
• Class capacity
• Tracked learning
• Scalability
• Increased engagement
• Ownership of education

The benefits don’t just extend to students, there are many benefits for teachers too:

• Increased collaboration
• Better work life balance
• Cost saving
• Ability to track and measure student abilities easily
• Expansion of educational topics and courses

The differences between hybrid and blended learning can be fairly subtle however, the outcome and overall lean towards technology are very different. All in all, no matter where or how students are learning, it shouldn’t hinder their needs or what they can achieve.
With schools preparing to return to classrooms from 8th March, you may be wondering how your students can benefit from a hybrid or blended learning approach. Jotter Learn could be just the solution you need. Read more about the platform here, or contact us if you’d like to arrange a demonstration with a member of our team.

If you’re a customer of School Jotter, you will have heard lots already about School Jotter 3 and many of the improvements that we’ve made from our previous website platform. But for those of you who are new to us, we wanted to tell you a little more.

The history of School Jotter

Since its original release in 2008, and with the School Jotter 2 upgrade in 2012, School Jotter has undoubtedly been one of the most popular school website platforms in the UK, with over 6,500 designed and delivered using this software.
But as always technology moves on, as do customer requirements, so we’ve rewritten the School Jotter software from scratch and in 2021 are bringing you school Jotter 3.

What’s new about School Jotter 3?

We’re confident that School Jotter will give schools a more delightful user experience when it comes to controlling and managing their websites. But School Jotter 3 is not just a website content management system, it also offers mobile apps for iOS and Android, which we’ll talk more about in our next post.
We’re proud of the research and development that has gone into the brand new School Jotter 3, we’ve really focussed on re-writing the software and designing a new architecture, taking into account much of the feedback we’ve received from customers over the years.

How different is School Jotter 3 from the previous versions?

School Jotter 3 has been written from the ground up using the latest technologies, with a focus on speed, security, and usability. By focussing on key areas such as page layout management and easy onboarding of users to the web and mobile platforms School Jotter 3 makes life easier for school administrators and teachers.
With the innovative technological approach with School Jotter 3, Webanywhere has planned a roadmap of features which will consistently deliver added value and useful functionality to schools; both to users of the web platform and the iOS and Android apps.

Still unsure about upgrading?

We think there are lots of compelling reasons to upgrade to School Jotter 3, but don’t just take our word for it.  Here are just a few stories of customers who are moving onto School Jotter 3, and why they’ve taken the decision to upgrade.
Simone Peters the Managing Director at Monarch Childcare recently chose to upgrade to School Jotter 3 to make use of the new visual editor. The nursery wanted to enhance their brand and engage better with parents, so alongside the website, they decided to purchase the premium mobile app too. This lets them benefit from the new features such as contact forms and booking management together with instant messaging. Simone saw this as having a competitive advantage over other nurseries in the area in a bid to appeal to new and existing parents who have children enrolled in her nursery.
Gail at Albany Village contacted us when she heard about School Jotter 3, she could see straight away from the short videos how the CMS had been simplified and was much slicker to use. Despite being in contract still for a number of months they have decided to upgrade early and get in the queue for the upgrade and subsequent new design. 
A member of staff at an Infant School in Buckinghamshire had inherited the responsibility of updating the school website from a predecessor. Although she could update it, she found it very cumbersome to upload anything, and found the page layouts so limiting that she decided to stop even trying to change them. 
Karen advised us she would be looking into alternatives as all she knew of Webanywhere was the 9 year old School Jotter 2 software. We presented the new updated version of the software, displaying how flexible editing the page layouts had become and how easy the photos were to upload. Added to that the update came with a brand new theme, Lynx Deluxe was here favourite. 
Martin Allen Deputy Headteacher and all round good sport, took the reins of the website and works alongside the admin staff in updating content. They struggled managing the file manager on School Jotter 2 and the structure of the information and wanted an easy and more efficient and effective way of updating this. School Jotter 3 seems to be the answer for Rawdon Littlemoors, issues and they are looking at the deluxes theme and in particular the Leopard theme which is responsive and fantastic on mobile. School Jotter 3 instant mobile was a game changer and may move them onto the platform. The school have been a loyal customer for many years and hopefully for many more years to come!

Find out more about School Jotter 3

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing lots more updates about School Jotter 3, but in the meantime, if you’re interested in finding out more about School Jotter 3 we’d love to have a chat with you. Book an appointment direct with a member of our sales team here, or get in touch with us at info@schooljotter.com

This year, possibly more than ever before, there has been greater demand put on schools to ensure they’re maintaining effective communication with parents and guardians. The school’s website and mobile app is an essential part of this.
School Jotter 3 is the biggest upgrade we’ve made to our school website and app software in recent years, making it easier than ever to keep parents engaged.
Sean Gilligan, Founder & CEO of Webanywhere said: “School Jotter 3 is the most advanced solution we’ve created and has been built combining the expertise of our development team, with feedback from customers. We’ve already had a number of pre-orders from schools who are excited to use such an intuitive platform, and we’re delighted to be rolling School Jotter 3 out to school’s all over the country, starting this month.”

Arthur Howie, Product Lead for School Jotter added: “The feedback we’ve received from customers has been invaluable in helping us to create School Jotter 3, which will be suited to schools of all types. Whether you’re an individual school or a multi-academy trust, we can create a beautifully designed website and mobile app, which is a breeze to update and maintain.”
One of the first customers to see School Jotter 3, Lindsey Caplan from Irlam Primary School, said: “Everything I’d have liked to see streamlined on our school website has been built into School Jotter 3. Building and editing pages has really improved, with far fewer clicks. I can really see this update saving us time, and making it much easier for other people in the school to become involved in managing our website.”
If your school is interested in using School Jotter 3 for your website and mobile app needs, find out more here, or speak directly to one of our education consultants by calling 0113 3200 750.

School websites have become a vital communication tool during the covid-19 pandemic. Despite the inevitable disruption, the team here at School Jotter is available for new sales queries and to offer advice and support to our current schools. Contact us using all the usual channels – details here.

Many schools have been using this time to update their websites. For some, it’s been a simple case of ensuring information is up to date, while other schools have chosen to give their website a complete overhaul or even rebuilt from scratch to provide a brand new portal providing information and resources to parents, children and other visitors. 

Summer is often the time when schools open their doors to potential new students and their families, but opportunities to visit in person are going to be limited this year. A good website can showcase your school and provide insight into its culture and ethos, making it easier for parents and children to make the best choice possible. 

We’ve put together a list of some of our favourite School Jotter websites from 2020. Have a look at the sites below – perhaps they will give you some inspiration for your own website!

Some of the best primary school websites in the UK include: Lindley Junior School, All Saints Church of England Primary School, West Acton Primary School, Woodlea Primary School and many more.

Lindley Junior School – 

www.lindleyjun.org.uk/
It’s easy to see why this school’s website made the list! The animated logo is welcoming, and the amazing drone footage immediately draws you in and gives you a unique perspective of the school grounds and facilities. Seeing the children so engaged in play gives you a really good feel for the school without the need for a physical visit. The school’s identity is strongly represented through the use of colours and images, the site is easy to navigate, and the homepage has all the important information you need, including contact details and latest news updates. 

All Saints Church of England Primary School – 

https://www.all-saints.oxon.sch.uk/
This website also makes good use of colour – there are splashes of green all over the site, giving it a clear and cohesive look. Finding your way around the site is straightforward – the navigation bar is constantly visible at the top of every page, and the calendar at the bottom of the homepage is an easy way for parents to find out what’s going on at a moment’s notice. The large images on the homepage serve two purposes – they are a fun way to showcase the school, and they guide visitors to important pages.

West Acton Primary School – 

https://www.westactonprimaryschool.org/
West Acton make great use of quick links on their no-scroll homepage, showcasing easy navigation as well as great pictures of the school right on the homepage. It doesn’t stop there either – with the rest of the site jam-packed with information around the school. With videos added to many of the inner pages, West Acton Primary’s website gives a truly virtual experience to prospective parents and makes information available easily to current parents. 

Woodlea Primary School – 

https://www.woodlea.durham.sch.uk
Woodlea Primary School’s website takes quite a different approach to the first two websites on our list. Rather than scrolling down the homepage to find what you need, all the information is accessible from a single screen, with pop-ups along the bottom of the page taking you to key areas. It’s a simple yet sleek look using Lion, one of our deluxe themes – you can see this and more deluxe templates at themes.schooljotter2.com .

Bushy Hill Junior School – 

https://www.bushy-hill.surrey.sch.uk
This website uses another of our deluxe School Jotter templates yet has a completely different look and feel to all the other sites on the list. The aerial photo that greets you provides a wonderful overview of the school’s facilities, and the homepage includes a calendar, latest news, and photo links to the areas parents are most likely to visit on a regular basis. 

Rufford Park Primary School – 

https://www.ruffordparkprimary.org.uk
The final website on our list is different in that it’s bespoke – that is, rather than using an existing template, the theme was specially designed for the school. There’s no scrolling on the homepage; instead, it showcases a single large photograph, along with pop-outs for latest news and events, which is a great way to highlight a specific aspect of your school.  There’s a wealth of information tucked away under the navigation menu, yet the site looks clean and uncluttered.
We hope our list has given you some inspiration about how you can update your school website to showcase it to both current and potential families. Whether you choose a template or a custom theme, there’s a design in School Jotter to suit every school’s needs.

Your website provides a vital link between staff and parents, school and home – or at least it should. There are so many templates schools can use to build a website quickly and easily but many of these could be outdated. They can often look old-fashioned and may be hard for parents to find their way around. So if you’re considering a new website for your school, how can you make sure to build a site that you can be proud of? Here are five key factors to consider. 

Web statistics

Why do people come to your website? Website statistics tell you how many visitors you’ve had, which pages they visited, how long they’ve spent on each page and much more. Once you know what people are looking for, you can make sure key information is easy to access. But you can only do that when you know the stats – so make sure your website design company offers access to them and presents them in an easy-to-understand way (Webanywhere does this! [https://www.schooljotter.com/school-websites/]). Use this data to identify the information that is viewed the most and structure your website in relation to the traffic – reducing click rate.

Easy navigation

There’s nothing more frustrating than a website with poor navigation, especially when you’re using your smartphone or tablet. If we can’t find what we want straight away, we generally give up and go elsewhere. This is the same for parents, if they can’t find something in 3 clicks or less, they are likely to get frustrated and call the school office for information. Make sure you have a simple navigation structure that makes it easy to find key information. Again, choose a web design company like Webanywhere who provide simple, straightforward navigation tools.

Keep it ‘above the fold’

Imagine a newspaper, folded in half. Where does the editor put the biggest, most important headline? On the top half of the front page, above the fold … And that’s the most important area of your website too. Think about what you want visitors to do when they land on your site – subscribe to a newsletter, request a prospectus, download a form? Put that CTA – call to action – on the top half of your homepage, and it’s the first thing people see – and the first thing they are likely to do. 

Keep it updated

There’s nothing worse than being out of date, yet so many schools’ websites look like they’ve not been updated for years. A fresh, modern design using your school colours and badge gives visitors a great first impression. It’s not all about looks though – make sure your key information, like contact details, staff directories and term dates, are up to date too. It’s also vital to keep updated with ofsted requirements, such as keeping evidence of current and previous curriculum – a website is the perfect tool for this.

Encourage repeat visits

Finally, encourage people to visit the website by adding new content on a regular basis. Newsletters, field trip reports, photo galleries, a calendar and a blog all help you connect with parents and keep people coming back. 

We’re running a competition to win a free mobile app for schools across the country. All you have to do to enter is get your pupils to create a design showing how they would like your school app to look. We’re accepting 3 designs per school so why not get every class involved, pick your final designs then send them through to marketing@webanywhere.co.uk.

Free 30 day trial School Jotter Mobile App

The School Jotter app pushes information straight from your websites through to parents’ phones, using push notifications, so they’re always up to date with what’s going on in your school. This saves time, increases parental engagement and can even help you go paperless, with integrated newsletter and notice functions.

All entries must be submitted by 14th February 2020 for your chance to win!

Click here to download the entry form