4 Actionable Tips For Effective School Website Design

How a well-designed school website can become your go-to communication source.

A well-designed website can be the one-stop-shop for your school's community to access important information and resources. For example, students might use your website to access their teacher's homework help videos. In contrast, the school PTA president might use your site to share an announcement promoting an upcoming fundraiser.

No matter your school's needs, a website can be an excellent asset for communicating with your community. However, most education professionals are new to web design and feel like creating a website for their school is difficult.

The good news is that though website design may look tricky at first glance, with the right tools and some actionable tips, anyone can create a website that looks great, is easy to use, and offers important resources and tools to visitors. To help you get started, this mini-guide will explore four actionable school web design tips:

1. Pick a school-specific website builder.
2. Incorporate your school's brand.
3. Add useful resources and create content regularly.
4. Incorporate online donation tools.

As you leverage these tips, don't forget to take inspiration from other school websites you admire. Moreover, you can learn from websites outside the education realm, too. For example, Morweb's roundup of the best nonprofit websites showcases strong examples of effective website design and can help you develop ideas for your own.

Ready to start designing a great school website? Let's dive in!

1. Pick a school-specific website builder.

You'll need a website builder to start designing your school's website. A website builder is simply a tool that allows you to create a website without coding it from scratch.

Most website builders will provide you with editing tools and multiple design themes and templates to work off of, but some are easier to use than others. For example, one of the more popular generic website builders available is WordPress. To fully leverage its tools and functionality, users face a steep learning curve, which can make the design process more difficult than it needs to be.

On the other hand, a website builder designed specifically for schools offers an easy-to-use tool for even the most amateur web designers. With a school-specific website builder, you can leverage the following tools:

• Easy-to-use content editor
• Simple upload capabilities for images and other media
• Built-in donation pages and buttons
• Event management tools
• Drag-and-drop widgets
• Automatic mobile-responsiveness

With all these tools and more, why would you opt for a generic website builder? That would be like using a rock to hammer a nail into a wall—doable but not very convenient or efficient. A school-specific website builder is a must-have tool that can lay the foundation for all the design work you do for your school's site and makes the next three tips in our mini-guide easy to implement.

2. Incorporate your school's brand.

Every school is unique—from its approach to education to the diverse population of students that it serves. All of the unique characteristics of your school make up your brand, and some visual elements of your brand can serve as a guiding light for your site's visual design.

These elements include:

• School logos or mascots. A logo or mascot can be a great visual reminder of your school and what it stands for. Many schools feature their logo or mascot on their homepage or other prominent locations across their websites.
• Taglines. A tagline is a brief, memorable phrase that captures the essence of your school's brand, such as New York University's "To preserve and to excel" or Caltech's "The truth shall make you free." Using your tagline on your website can root the site in your school's mission, reminding website visitors of your values and vision for your student body.
• School colors: School colors aren't just for sports team uniforms or graduation gowns! You can use your school colors to guide your site's color scheme. And, like a mascot, your school colors can inspire some school spirit in every person visiting your site.

Your website's branding might look like this: Say your school's colors are crimson and gold. You might use crimson as a background color for your site and color your navigation menu gold. Or, if your school mascot is an owl, you could feature an owl in one of the top corners of your website header so it's visible on every page.

In sum, your school's brand can help you tell your school's story and generate interest in everything your website has to offer your audience. Plus, consistently using the same visual brand you use everywhere else can help your school's operations appear more streamlined and cohesive.

3. Add useful resources and create content regularly.

Once you have the overall look of your website ironed out, it's time to start building resources and content into your site. The information and tools you provide will draw your school community to your site and keep your visitors returning for more.

Here are some typical resources schools like to include on their websites:

• Parent/Student Portal. Your students may need to log into a learning management system (like Canvas) to access assignments and view their grades. Or, parents may need to log into a portal to pay student fees. With a school-specific website builder, you can take a page from the association's design playbook and provide password-protected portals and resources to protect personal information and connect families with educational tools.
• Events Calendar. An events calendar is a great place to store information, from the weekly lunch menu to upcoming school sporting events, orchestra performances, and holidays. Revisit your events calendar often to ensure it provides visitors with accurate and up-to-date information.
• Live Social Media Feed. With the right website builder, you can connect your website with your social media profiles via a live social media feed. This will encourage visitors to keep up with your school on social media and move back and forth between the two channels.

To give your website visitors a reason to return regularly, you should look for consistent ways to create new content.

One of the best ways to do this is to set up a school blog where you post school announcements, news, and other useful information. You might, for example, give a rundown of last week's lacrosse game or provide instructions for participating in an upcoming online fundraiser.

4. Incorporate online donation tools.

Your school website can strengthen your approach to fundraising, too. On top of providing information about upcoming fundraising events on your school calendar or blog, you can also add fundraising tools to your website that make it easy for your school to raise money consistently.

Start by creating an online donation page with an easy-to-use donation form. This should allow your school's donors to quickly provide their contact information and payment details and securely submit their gifts. As you design your donation page, consider offering multiple ways to give, like an option to make a gift a monthly recurring donation or check for gift matching eligibility.

Another excellent online tool for school fundraising is an online school store. Through your store, you can sell branded merchandise that helps you pull in support and boost school spirit. You might sell branded t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, or even stuffed animal versions of your mascot. To take your store to the next level, consider selling sponsorship opportunities, too. For example, you could sell a sponsorship package for your school play with a verbal thank-you before the performance and a shoutout in the playbill.

The important thing to remember when adding online donation tools to your school website is that they should be user-friendly. Make sure you test your tools and ensure they'll make giving fast, convenient, and easy. This will help you encourage your donors to return to give repeatedly!

A well-designed school website can help your school in many ways, whether you're looking to provide educational resources to your students or to see more success with online fundraisers.

As you embark on your web design journey, use these four tips to get a running start. You'll soon find that with the right tools and the help in this guide, you can create a fantastic website representing your school and its mission. Good luck!

Author Bio

Clay Boggess has been designing fundraising programs for schools and various nonprofit organizations throughout the US since 1999. He’s helped administrators, teachers, and outside support entities such as PTAs and PTOs raise millions of dollars. Clay is an owner and partner at Big Fundraising Ideas.