11 January 12

Ten Tips for a Better School Website

Schools and their web providers often miss the obvious when building websites - and end up with sites that are unappealing and unusable to visitors. Here are 10 things they should remember....

1. The Web is different to Print

The web isn't a book, or a newspaper, or a municipal library, or a fax; it doesn't function like a paperback or a broadsheet. Obvious? Of course - yet many schools approach the web in a traditional Before-The-Web way, trying to shoehorn old practices into a new framework. And that's why school sites are frequently little more than places to dump a PDF of their prospectus.

To keep a school website humming requires a basic understanding that information must be constantly moving and evolving to make the exercise work. For a site to become a vibrant, interactive tool, it must become a natural part of the school's workflow. Nothing is static - the moment you stop going forward, you'll be slipping backwards.

2. Check your site on a Smartphone

The web isn't just active, it's now portable. With over a quarter of adults and half of teens now accessing the web on smartphones, and 7% of web use happening on tablets like the iPad, it's essential that sites work on these devices. Yet many school sites won't even load on a BlackBerry. Remember - very soon, sites that don't work on the move will be ignored.

Mobile phones were just the beginning. We predict that it won't be long until all kids carry a mobile equipment of some kind, complete with automatic tracking and reporting of their location, constantly interfacing with home and school. We're all aware that, just as the concept of work has changed, the concept of schooling is, too - and by then, websites as we know them will be redundant. Mobile is the future - but to be ready, schools must work with the technology available now.

3. Always build to Web Standards

Web Standards, like rail tracks, provide base criteria to ensure that a myriad sizes and types of sites can run online successfully. A large proportion of school sites ignore these - resulting in pages that fall apart, areas that don't appear, drop-down menus that don't drop, or sites looking different in different browsers.

It could only be a matter of time before good practice moves to legislation, with certain types of site owners being required to ensure their websites are 'accessible to all'. Build your site so it has nothing to fear!

4. Comic Sans is only cool if you're Superman

Probably the most inappropriately used 'kids' font on the planet (not the Daily Planet), Comic Sans was based on typography found in DC Comics, which gave a pencil-drawn immediacy to the text of the stories. However, when it landed a cushy corporate job in Microsoft's Core Font Family, destined for every PC, the font's footprint grew inexorably.

It seems, wherever poor quality school sites are, Comic Sans lurks also. But is it really a child-friendly font? OK, kids read comics. But Comic Sans doesn't make a piece of text more alluring or understandable to them, and certainly looks dumb on a serious document to be read by adults. Avoid it - and not least because the font also has many unfortunate associations with the bane of school sites: the Kidz Korner.

5. 'Kidz Korners' insult children's intelligence

At Paperhorse, we are constantly aghast at how many established school web suppliers still use Kids(z) Corners (Korners) as areas to contain any content that is supposed to be vaguely relevant to children. This is actually the online equivalent of the Butlins' crèche with the balloon-man - somewhere to keep kidz amused when you can't think what else to do with them. All we can say is that, if a school site's regular content isn't relevant to children then some web designerz somewhere aren't doing their jobz.

6. One in twelve males are colour-blind

...and there are many visually-impaired and dyslexic users that use the web daily. It's actually easy to build sites that can be read by speech recognition and screen-read software, simply by adhering to Web Standards, but the most blindingly obvious way is to avoid colour combinations that are difficult to see. There are simple tests to apply for this, but all too often, school web builders don't check colour palettes for accessibility. One of London's bright new academies uses a fascinating combination of lemon yellow and warm grey for its menus.

7. Web copy doesn't have to be boring

You're allowed to be chatty and colloquial. Every site needs a 'voice' - so find a good writer in your school and have them write concise pages that make your school sound interesting. There's too much cut and paste, fire and forget copy out there that doesn't draw in users. Schools need exciting writing - straplines, unique propositions, persuasive words that make you want to explore the site further, then come and visit. Write key pages one day and publish the next - all professional writers use an 'overnight test' of their work. Demonstrate you can teach children Literacy, because you use it.

8. Wear your Address short

We've got an entire article on this one. Web addresses should be pithy, short, at a top level domain (like a .com) whenever possible. And whenever not possible too.

9. Hit Counters count for nothing - use Analytics

Some site managers haven't twigged yet, but the presence of an odometer set to 00086 on your front page doesn't exactly inspire visitor confidence. Hit counters were redundant in 1997. Or so we thought. Except that we know of some well-established school web suppliers who've installed them on sites recently.

If you really want to track who is using your site, where they're from, which pages they enter and leave at, how long they spend, plus a wealth of other data, there are great free Analytics tools out there that help you to make informed choices about where you put content on your site, enabling you to reach your visitors more accurately. So leave the hit counting to Cliff Richard.

10. Use Paperhorse to build your site

OK, we had to get it in. If you don't want to make these (and the other fifty common mistakes) and you want the web to work for your school, work with the people who know the web.

Call Michael Phillips, Creative Director at Paperhorse on 01225 585 333 or contact us using the form.

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