A well-designed school website is essential to any school. A well-designed website drives admissions, boosts parent responsiveness, increases information sharing, and makes many administrative tasks much easier. The only way you can get a decent website is to have a fantastic web designer on the job. One that understands how school websites should function, and what needs to be included on them.
This is a guide to choosing the right school web design company.
Start With Your School’s Objectives
Before you can start reaching out to potential web developers, you should have a solid idea about what you want from your website. It helps your web designer:
- Compliance: many schools consider getting their websites re-designed because they are not compliant with DfE or Ofsted requirements i.e. missing key information, or it is too hidden.
- Admissions growth: a site re-design can help to boost admissions. This can mean including more updated information, or driving people towards admission inquiries a little better.
- Parental communication: making it easier to share important information with parents, or making it easier for parents to reach out.
- MAT consistency: important for schools part of a MAT. All schools in the MAT should have similar branding.
- Accessibility requirements (WCAG 2.1): making it easier for everybody to access a website, including those with disabilities.
- Budget constraints: have an idea of how much you are willing to spend on your website. We know this can be tough, since schools now have very limited budgets.
You don’t need to have a firm grasp of what you want with the website yet, but a solid idea will really help make things easier for you.
Make Sure They Specialise in School Websites
Any web developer you work with should have experience with school websites. This is because this type of website is completely different from any other site.
Education-specific experience means the designer understands what schools require. This includes:
- Knowledge about Ofsted statuatory requirements, ensuring the right information is included on the website.
- Knowledge of the UK education sector. This means sharing information that parents need, legal requirements, and driving admissions to schools.
- Safeguarding awareness: this includes the protection of parent/student data, and able to put together pages that showcase safeguarding policies.
- MAT structures: many schools are now part of a MAT. These websites need to be designed in very specific ways, and an experienced web designer will have knowledge of how to accomplish this.
If you work with a web designer that has zero experience with UK school website design, then chances are you’ll need to pay have the website changed later on down the line.
Check Compliance Expertise
Schools need to mitigate risk wherever possible. Therefore, you are within your rights to check the experience that a web developer has with school compliant laws and regulations. So, feel free to ask your potential web developer about the following:
- What the current Ofsted school website requirements are i.e. which information needs to be included on a website, and where it needs to be included. If you are having websites for a MAT designed, then ask them about their knowledge when it comes to the difference between the overarching MAT website and the individual schools.
- Their knowledge of DfE statutory content i.e. the content that legally needs to be included on your website.
- Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA). While it is not a legal requirement to conform to WCAG 2.1 AA rules, it helps. Your website should be accessible to everybody, and a good web designer will know how to develop for those who have disabilities such as blindness, motor conditions, etc.
- GDPR & data protection: protecting data is a legal requirement. Talk to your web developer about how they will stay GDPR compliant, and help protect the data of everybody on your website.
- Cookie compliance: there are more laws than ever surrounding cookie compliance, particularly in the United Kingdom. Your web developer needs to understand these rules.
It will help if you have a semi-decent understanding of all these requirements beforehand. It makes it easier to discuss how the developer can help.
Review Their CMS (Content Management System)
Your website will likely be built upon a ready-made content management system (CMS), since it is unlikely a school’s budget will be able to stretch to a custom-made CMS. Still, a good web developer will tailor the system to suit your school. It is important that consider a few things when talking to the developer:
- How easy is the website to update for staff? As simple as possible is important. If pages can be updated in a way that is very similar to using a word processor, then that is a double bonus.
- What pages can be included with the CMS? A school, at the minimum should have pages for news, events, policies, calendar, and staff pages.
- Can different roles be assigned to users of the site? This ensures people do not have access to parts of the system they shouldn’t have. This will help to protect data, and mistakes when updating pages.
- Training: this is important. At least a couple of people will need to know how to keep the website up to date. You don’t want to be contacting the web developer every time a page needs to be added or updated. All good developers will offer some training.
- Support: will there be continual support for the site i.e. in terms of software updates, bug fixes, etc. If yes (and there should be) fine out how long this lasts, and whether there are any additional fees.
Evaluate Design Quality & User Experience
A reputable web developer will allow you to see past projects they’ve completed. Do this. Check out the quality of design for their past projects (make sure they are school-specific). Put yourselves in the shoes of parents and staff members, and think about the overall user experience. Is it good? What issues are there? Only by seeing past projects will you start to understand whether a developer is good at their job.
If the developer has testimonials, ask for them.
Ask About Hosting, Security, and Support
Your website needs to be hosted online. Talk to your web developer about whether you’ll need to find a web host, or whether they can help you with that. Some developers will have their own hosting services they can provide you with (for a fee).
Chat to the developer about site security (i.e. what safety measures are in place to protect your school’s platform). You should also ask what happens should you encounter any issues with the platform. This means discovering whether the developer has a support system in place.
Good developers will be 100% transparent about all of this.
Understand Pricing & Contracts
Unfortunately, school budgets are tighter and tighter. This means that you need to be crystal-clear about the financing your web development project. This means:
- Ensure the developer is transparent about their pricing. Make sure there are no hidden fees. What they quote at the start should be what you pay.
- Learn about whether there are any set-up fees, and whether there will be on-going costs for the site e.g. hosting, support, etc.
- Contract length: if the developer will be providing support and updates for your site, learn how long this will go on for.
- If the developer is purchasing a domain name for you, be 100% certain about who owns that domain name. It should be your school.
Ask the Right Questions Before You Decide
A good web developer will not be afraid of any questions you have. Consider what we’ve mentioned on this page already, and make sure that you ask questions before you make a final decision. You need to be certain you’re working with the right web developer, after all.
Red Flags to Watch Out For
Here are a few red flags to keep an eye out for. If the developer has any of these red flags, don’t work with them:
- No education-specific experience: we have covered this before, but a school website is completely different from any other type of website. Certain requirements need to be in place. If a developer has no experience with education, skip them.
- No mention of compliance: Both the DfE and Ofsted have compliance requirements in place. If a developer doesn’t mention they’ll be compliant, they probably won’t.
- No training: a good developer will ensure that you have solid knowledge about how to use your new platform.
- No ongoing support: sites need updating, bugs fixed, etc.
- Long, restrictive contracts
Why Choose School Jotter for Your Schools Website
School Jotter has spent over 20 years building websites for over 3000 schools. Not only is School Jotter a school website design platform but also a CMS and hosting service designed specifically to meet the needs of schools.
School Jotter includes software modules that help educators with creating school surveys, organising parents’ evenings and improving pupils’ spelling.
We also ensure that schools are fully complaint and information is easily accessible to parents and inspectors.
How To Choose a Long-Term Partner School Website
Invest the time in finding a good developer to work with. If you can find the right school website developer, you’ll be working with them for years to come. Reach out to us here at School Jotter to see how we can help.
