5 Tips to attract parents & students with good school website design

1. Make It Visually Simple But Classy

A cluttered website will scare visitors away. If visitors feel overwhelmed by the array of information, menus, images and fonts on the screen, they will have choice paralysis and choose to leave the site rather than attempt to engage with it.

You don’t have to fill every gap with more colours and images. Pick a good, clear font or two and stick with it throughout.

Don’t, however, make your website so overly simplistic that it looks like it was designed in the 1990s. Modern, classy stylistic standards should be aspired to – just minimise the clutter.

2. Prioritise That Homepage

The home or landing page is the first thing parents and students will see when they visit the site. It will establish the first impression and set the tone for the user experience from that point on.

Moreover, the landing page is where you establish your brand image and convey the brand promise of what your school is about. School colours, emblems, mascots, mottos and so on should all be emblazoned here as well as the sense of belonging.

3. Make It Navigable And Accessible

If your website is difficult to navigate, then people won’t engage with it. Make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for by anticipating what they want by designing logical menu trees that make sense.

In other words: put stuff where viewers expect to find it.

You also need to make the website accessible in terms of making sure it loads quickly. Your fonts and colour schemes should also be legible and easy on the eye.

Critically, you need to ensure that your website is optimised for mobile since most of your target audience is going to be using their phones to access your site.

4. Ensure Regular And Relevant Content Updates

For maximum and ongoing engagement, you want to get parents and students directly involved with the content creation on your website.

This might include posting essays and letters written by students and parents, as well as photos or videos of students and parents at school-related events. It might also include sharing the achievements of students and parents in their local communities and more.

The website should also be a place where teachers and school management can share important and interesting information with parents, which ties in with the next point.

5. Incorporate Useful Tools

You should include interactive features such as event calendars, notice boards, and perhaps even some form of social media for the school and its stakeholders to interact virtually.

You could also create portals for students to access homework assignments, liaise with teachers, create study groups, coordinate extramural activities or access virtual libraries.

The more parents and students can interact with the content by contributing to content creation themselves, the more the website will attract them.