Here at Webanywhere, we offer bespoke school web design and development services that provide schools with unique and highly functional websites, which are scalable, tailored to their needs, and are intended to offer the best user experience possible.
If your target is to generate a strong and unforgettable online brand image for your school, there is a plethora of benefits that come from investing in a bespoke school website.
In this article, we’ll discuss why a bespoke web design offers a more sustainable, professional advantage to your school in the long term.
Superiority Of Custom School Web Design
Your school website needs a personality, and designers will help you come up with a personalised solution, from start to finish. Important factors to consider include navigation, ease of use, layout, graphics and a color scheme.
Since a custom design site is built specifically for your needs, you gain more independence and control. You won’t have to worry about trying to adapt it to suit your purposes as you would with a standard school web design. As long as you are working with a good design team, they will be around to provide ongoing support.
Responsive Design
Responsive websites are designed to give users the best possible experience across all modern computers, tablets, smartphones, and internet ready devices.
In the last decade, mobile data traffic has increased 3000%, this is expected to increase by over 400% by 2021.
Think of the amount of times that you check your phone each day… How often do you use your phone to Google something or check on social media?
80% of internet user own a smartphone and there are more mobile users than desktop users. People have much shorter attention spans and will not give a website a second chance if it has a slow load time or will not display properly on their mobile device. Why should they? We live in a consumer savvy society in which people are used to online instant gratification thanks to technology.
On average, we spend three hours a day glued to our smartphones. A recent Huffington Post study showed that responsive websites saw a 37% increase in unique visitors and a 50% increase in time people spend on pages.
SSL Certificates are a Must
Whenever you use the internet, you are sharing packets of information. This might be something seemingly small, like a request for the contents of a website to be sent to your browser. It might be something more important, like details of a bank card. Every time you click on a link or fill in a form, you share a little bit of information and you get a bit back.
For websites without SSL certification, this information is not encoded. If someone intercepts it then they can read the information you have sent. The growth of wireless networks and mobile browsing has created more possibilities for interception than ever before.
SSL is important because it lets people use your website more safely. Those packets of information, however big or small, can’t be read if they are intercepted.
This has a lot of implications for a school website.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search engine optimization or SEO in short, is a set of rules that can be followed by website owners to optimize their websites for search engines and thus improve their search engine rankings. For example, if a parent searches for your school on Google you want your website to appear first in search results.
- To make sure this happens, just follow these steps:
- Check your site’s health on Google Search Console.
- Submit your sitemap to Google.
- Take a good look at your title tags.
- Make sure your meta descriptions are snappy and engaging.
- Check for keyword cannibalisation.
- Claim your Google My Business listing.
- Link to high-authority websites.
- Share your knowledge in blog posts.
- Add alt tags to your images. Above all, focus on search intent and user experience.
Support and Security
Ensuring that you keep all software up to date is crucial in keeping your school website secure. This software includes the server operating system and also any CMS or forum software that is used on your site. Hackers can work their way into your website and cause trouble through outdated software.
Your web hosting company should take care of your operating system security updates.
It’s very important to use strong passwords for both your server and website admin areas. It’s equally as important to ask your web users to ensure that their passwords are strong. This will help them to protect the security of their accounts.
If you allow users to upload files to your website, it can be a big website security risk, even if it’s simply to change their avatar. The risk is that any file uploaded however innocent it may look, could contain a script that when executed on your server completely opens up your website.
The Bottom Line
So a bespoke school website should have a unique and true responsive design – not emulated. You will need an expert development and design team, such as Webanywhere, to support and assist you with this.
True scalability and the ability to integrate any online technology (as it becomes available) are a must as well as security from common vulnerabilities.
Most importantly, you need an optimised solution that is light, fast and responsive, and of course good value for money.
