Whenever one of our account managers is asked for an example of a great school website, he always picks the same one, and it’s pretty easy to see why – Chandlers Field is a modern, professional-looking website that really shows off the capabilities of the School Jotter platform as well as the open, contemporary nature of the school itself.
The site is designed with clean, modern lines and a blue-tinted palette, and wouldn’t look out of place as the homepage for a major company. There are traditional Schooljotter hallmarks, of course, such as the “swoosh” wave effect at the bottom of the banner, but they’re given a distinctly modern twist. The large amount of space given to the slideshow gives the school a real chance to show off images and values.
Navigating the site is easy and fluid, with a combined approach on sub-pages of the navigation bar at the top and a menu bar to the left, providing permanent, breadcrumb-like access to all levels of the site’s hierarchy. Additionally, there’s some very nice transition effects on the homepage between the “Latest News” and “Calendar” tabs, making an economical use of the space and letting both the latest news and the calendar have pride of place.
In the seven months the site has been live, Chandlers Field has received a huge amount of praise from staff at Webanywhere and is frequently held up as an example of the flexibility of School Jotter’s primary school web designs, so we’re confident in naming them our School Jotter of the Week.
We’re reviving the “Website of the Week” feature – check back every Tuesday when we’ll be shining our spotlight on yet another fantastic Jotter Site.
Hungerford brings a modern, tile-based design to its website, making great use of both contrasting colours with clean lines and imagery. The site went live in May 2015, and we can clearly see the school’s been getting great usage out of it in the ensuing months.
The first thing you see when you load the page is a stylised design of Stephenson’s Rocket, a reference to the railway heritage of the Crewe-based school. This is on the left of the header, leaving the right open for a large, circular slideshow of images of the school, for a thoroughly unique design. Below this, the image-based tiles provide an easy way of navigating around the site.
Scrolling down, we can see some great usage of School Jotter Site’s embedded objects. Parents, students and teachers can quickly see what’s happening at the school from the dynamic content, ranging from a visual calendar of events through to the latest news and a twitter feed – a surprisingly rare thing amongst primary schools! Promoting a twitter feed on the front page of a website is a great way to gain followers, as well as to show engagement with them.
The overall design of the site is one that’s elegant, informative and tailored to the school – this is no “one-size-fits-all” cheap template. Our designers have consulted with the school and their account manager in order to create a theme which perfectly reflects the school’s ethos.
Every week, schooljotter.com names one school website its School Jotter of the Week – showcasing those websites that are great examples of how a school website should be. Now, we want you to tell us if you think you have an outstanding School Jotter!
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