Nicky Dussek, Senior Consultant at Sparrowhawk Communications, explains how to make a great first impression with your school, or school trust, website.
Clear Navigation
Make sure all the sections of your site are logical and that information is never more than two clicks away. Don’t forget that today’s website users expect a website search because they are used to Googling everything. Don’t forget to carefully consider how your site might grow in future too.
Tell Your Story
Concise, engaging editorial and an authoritative, warm and friendly tone of voice will really sell your school or school trust. Stick to easy-to-understand language with no jargon and add personality. To draw visitors in, ensure your content is informative, engaging and written from the heart. It’s also important that content is quickly scannable for busy readers by using headings, bullets, lists and clear calls to action. Having a good set of professionally art-directed photos, taken ideally by the same photographer, will help ensure a consistent look and feel to your site.
Good On Mobile
If you look at your web traffic, you will probably notice that many users come to you via mobile. Check your website is accessible on various devices, including smartphones and tablets. A ‘responsive’ mobile website is where the design shifts to fit devices and a ‘mobile first’ website is where the mobile and desktop websites are designed concurrently, ensuring performance is the same on a desktop and a mobile.
Load and Waiting Times
Most users get frustrated if a website takes over two seconds to load. Slower load times are usually due to incorrectly optimised images, multimedia and large PDFs. Always ensure your images and files are optimised for web, which means they might need to be compressed. Images and files should be uploaded in 72dpi, with JPEGs for images and PNGs for graphics. If your pages are still slow to load, you can reduce your number of images or files.
Search, SEO and Security
So that your users can find you, adhere to SEO guidelines by using well-chosen keywords, short urls, wrapped headings, compressed multimedia, internal links, alt text on images and social sharing buttons. All of this will drive more traffic. Regularly check your website is in good health. A good website hosting provider will take care of your site speed, privacy and security of data, but don’t be afraid to ask questions about how your data is protected.
To talk to us about your website or any of your PR, communications or marketing needs, contact: jessica@sparrowhawkcommunications.com