It doesn’t seem five minutes since the new school term started, does it? Yet here we are, into December already – and I’m sure you’ve started counting down to the last day of term!

If you’ve already decorated the classrooms, start thinking about getting your school’s website all festive too. If you’re a School Jotter user, we’ve listed three ways you can make your website more festive – and more fun to visit!

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Whether your school already has a website, you’re about to get one, or you’re thinking of changing your school website, one thing should always be a priority for you: Keeping it up to date.

This may seem like an obvious statement. But bearing in mind that a regularly updated website can vastly improve your Google rankings, and that many people will keep on coming back if they see new content each time they visit, it’s vital to make your online presence a priority. Keeping your content fresh is vital for attracting prospective parents to your school website.
So, in order for you to keep your school website up to date without having to devote a significant amount of your time to it, we have five ideas for you.

Choose A System That’s Easy To Use
The easier your website system is to update and manage, the quicker you can update it. No one likes using a system that’s laborious and complicated; least of all busy teachers. When choosing a school website, or moving to a new one, always consider how much of your time it’s going to take up with creating new pages, adding text and uploading photographs. Of course, School Jotter is designed to be as simple as possible – because we believe that if a website system requires weeks of training before you can even get started, it’s not worth bothering with.

Assign Responsibilities
Many schools will assign one person to keep the website updated. However, if you have luxury of a few members of staff contributing, assign different people to different areas of the website. For example, your secretary could keep your events pages up to date with the latest open evenings, sports days and school parties, or your children could write blog posts for their teacher to upload. If each area of piece of content is assigned to a specific member of staff, it’ll be easier to keep all areas of your website up to date.
Also, giving deadlines for when certain content needs to be added – for example, updating of classwork pages every Friday by 3pm – may also help with ensuring content is regularly added.

Try Different Things
You don’t want maintaining your website, or creating content for it, to become boring for you and your staff. If you lose interest, so will your website’s visitors. So, try new ways of adding content every now and then, and keep your website fresh. Getting the children involved with the school website is a great way to improve their ICT skills – and they’ll feel a real part of the school too, both online and offline.
One example of trying something different could be creating a video of the children’s classwork, narrated by the children, rather than uploading the work itself.

Have Website Meetings
Keep the website front-of-mind for all concerned with regular website meetings – or, have the website as part of the agenda for your other regular meetings. This is also a great way to generate new ideas for content – and you can check on progress of updates and changes to the website.

Encourage Feedback
There’s no better way to find out if your school website is doing the trick than to ask visitors what they think of it. You could set up a form on your website for feedback  – even ask specific questions about the website – and then make any changes according to the information you get back.
You could also widen the net and ask the children themselves what they think to it – or send out a short survey to parents. This way, you can get vital information about things like how regularly the News section should be updated – or whether the website design is appealing enough. Respond to the feedback with what people want – and you’ll have visitors coming back to your school’s website again and again.

Brooksward School’s website is professional yet simple – with a great use of four colours.

There are so many great pages on this school website. The Kids section provides links to some fantastic learning sites, like BBC Bitesize, Maths Champs and Phonics Play. This section will get children onto the website and interacting with the multiple resources that are available.
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Today’s Website Of The Week is one the Webanywhere team are particularly proud of. St Teresa’s Catholic Primary School, Birmingham’s website features a design that’s somewhat different to anything we’ve created in the past, with a charming, rustic, ‘textured’ theme that makes this school feel warm, familiar and friendly.

The school themselves have arranged the content in tidy, user-friendly sections which can be accessed via the menu on the left. One thing that stands out for us is the staff list, with profile pictures drawn by the children themselves. It fits perfectly with the style and feel of the website!

Overall, this is a beautiful website neatly arranged and not over-complicated with too much information – perfect for parents to access, and, with this being a School Jotter 2 website, simple for teachers to update quickly.
View St Teresa’s Catholic Primary School’s website by clicking here. If you’d like your school website designed like this, let us know by clicking here.

At Webanywhere we’re lucky enough to have a team of designers and artists to create outstanding designs for school websites – and Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School, Sowerby Bridge is no exception.

The characters in the School Jotter 2 website’s header echo the feel and the content of the website itself – little children learning and playing, and even a representation of a familiar character!

The website includes pages like the School Bus section – a lovely page detailing the school bus service and where it picks children up from. The parish church also gets its own page and visitors can also see pictures of the Holy Communion.
Take a look at Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School’s beautifully-designed website by clicking here.

Fairfield Endowed Church of England Junior School’s website homepage is bright, energetic, fun and lively. The bespoke theme option available with School Jotter 2 has given this Derbyshire based school the opportunity to create a header and footer style theme for their school website that is personal to them. In fact, it’s quite unlike any of the school websites we’ve worked on so far!

The menu is clear and simple, making it easy for visitors to find exactly what they are looking for. One of the school’s aims is for children to ‘be active and healthy’ – this message is backed up by the photos used on their homepage.

Fairfield Junior School’s website is still new, but we look forward to seeing how it develops as they add more content over the coming months!

Take a look at the Fairfield Endowed Church of England Junior School’s website here.

 

School Jotter 2’s bespoke themes allow you to creatively build a website style that is personal to your school. With the use of bright colours on their homepage, Highbury School’s School Jotter 2 bespoke theme gives a really welcoming first impression.

The menu on the homepage is clear and simple, enabling people to easily navigate around the site. The What’s On box on the homepage is also a useful inclusion, as is the search bar. This is a helpful feature of School Jotter 2; here it is used on every page to help visitors find exactly what they are looking for.

The School Newsletter page has a great feature that allows parents to subscribe to the school’s newsletters by simply entering their email address. As soon as a newsletter is uploaded onto the website, the parents receive it automatically. Take a look here!

Another handy tool for parents is the contact form; parents can submit queries to the school by filling out just a few details. There’s also a useful tool called Google translate – this can be used to translate the whole website into another language.

There’s plenty of photos and useful information throughout the website, to really get an idea of what this Brighouse, West Yorkshire-based school is about. One of the most useful aspects for parents of potential pupils is that in just one click you can be directed to the Ofsted website, to view latest reports and information about the school.

Take a look at the Highbury School website, with its bespoke design, here.

 

Coleshill Church of England Primary School’s bespoke School Jotter 2 theme really brings their homepage to life, with the use of colourful images of the school and school playground.

Testimonials from pupils can also be found on the homepage which is perfect for attracting potential pupils’ parents as they explain how they think their school is fun, friendly and a great place to make friends.

The Birmingham school have also created useful links to resources, Ofsted reports and given links to e-safety and road safety related information.

The homepage is extremely easy to navigate around with a clear drop down menu across the top of the page, and the use of a search bar to enable site visitors to easily find what they are looking for. A useful and popular feature of School Jotter is a scrolling text marquee, which can be found in use on Coleshill’s homepage to make parents aware of things like end of term dates and school closures.

If you would like to create a colourful, engaging website for your school, get some inspiration by checking out the Coleshill C of E Primary School website here. Ask us about creating a bespoke school website design for you by clicking here.

The Federation of Mowden Schools aim to provide their pupils with an environment that enables them to develop to their full potential. This is the impression given in the design and content of their school website.

Their School Jotter 2 website is clear and simple, making it easy to navigate around. Subsequently, it’s easy for parents to find the information they need. The bright colours and professionally-taken photos used on the homepage, showing pupils engaged with their work, are also welcoming to the people who visit the website.

One of the main features of this website is the Parent page, which holds plenty of useful content to increase engagement. They even use a quote from Ofsted on the Behaviour page that compliments the school on being a safe and welcoming environment.

The Federation of Mowden Schools’ website uses a bespoke School Jotter design, created by Webanywhere’s design team. Ask us about creating a bespoke school website design for you by clicking here. Take a look at The Federation of Mowden School’s website here.

On their School Jotter 2 website, Wimborne Infant School describe themselves as a ‘safe, bright, airy and colourful school’ – and, using School Jotter 2 to its full potential, this is the impression you get when you visit their website.

The Southsea, Hampshire school has gone for a background on their website that reflects their locale: all British townhouses and local wildlife. The content they’ve uploaded to the website equally reflects the ethos of the school: bright, fun pictures of children learning, and a warm friendly, welcome letter from the Headteacher.

One of the strongest features of the website is on the homepage – Wimborne Infant School have put a comment from Ofsted there, along with a parent’s thoughts on the school. This is perfect for attracting potential pupils’ parents.
Some of the school website is yet to be finished – but Wimborne Infant School have made a very promising start.
If you’re looking for a brighter, more engaging primary school website – send us a message via our Contact page. Take a look at Wimborne Infant School’s website here.