Your school website is one of the best marketing and communication tools your school can use. It is an opportunity to provide a window to your school, showing your strengths and successes to your key audience. An investment in a website can take a chunk of your school’s budget not to mention an investment of time during the design and development and you need to ensure that this investment reaps returns and achieves the goals and vision that you aspire to be.
Before you start…
Set some website objectives
What are you looking to achieve from your website? Does this link with your school improvement plan?
- A platform to communicate school news
- Engage more with your parents/carers
- Encourage home learning
Roles and Responsibilities
- Who will take responsibility for updating your website – admin, SLT or teaching staff?
- What information will you need updating?
- How often will it be updated?
Ensure Safe Practices
- Ensure all staff who have access to the website are trained to use it
- Communicate the objectives of what should and shouldn’t be published
- Introduce web specific policies for staff
- Govern the published information
- Ensure copyright with images and audio
- Do you have parent’s permission to use pupil images? How often are these reviewed?
Thinking about the design….
Make your information easy to find
- Group all of the information targeting a specific user – such as parents, Ofsted, the community, pupils.
- Make the home page easy to navigate and publish your most requested information on it.
Consistency, consistency, consistency
- Keep your website clean and consistent in delivery of messages, font and ensure your school brand is reflected throughout the website.
Keep your site up to date
- Keep your news letters home and key information up to date.
- REMOVE ALL CONTENT THAT IS OUTDATED!
Maintaining your website…
Track your visitors
Check your website stats – who is visiting, what pages are they visiting? What pages are they not visiting? And adapt your website accordingly.
iTCHYROBOT Schools are one of the leading providers of School websites. For further information on our web platform created specifically for schools, visit our website itchyrobot.co.uk |
Itchyrobot are one of the leading providers of School websites in the UK. For further information on the services please visit itchyrobot.co.uk.