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Winning Websites:
Your School's Essential Marketing Tool
by
Lynn Kepford

Survey Question My school has a website. Yes No If no We want to get one, but need help We are not planning to have a website Please check the appropriate box and click the submit button.

A website is an essential tool in today’s educational marketplace. Through your school’s website, you provide the world outside, as well as the school community, with information about your school. Here is the ideal location to showcase your school’s achievements, enhance communication, foster positive relationships, highlight student accomplishments, and to provide resources, instruction and professional development. Some basic factors essential to developing your school’s website include: Purpose Target audience Content Design considerations In researching charter schools across the nation, I have noticed that a good number do not yet have websites. Many may not have realized the need for a site or the benefits having a site can reap. A well-constructed website can serve many purposes.

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1. Websites help potential enrollees find your school on the web. We are living in an age of information overload. When people want to find information about something quickly, one of the first places they go is to the Internet. The Pew Internet & American Life Project surveyed 2000 people and found that 60% regularly used the Internet to find information—over half of the people polled! Your school needs a web presence as a first line of contact. A carefully crafted site is an essential marketing tool which will help potential students and their families find your school online.
   
   
2. Websites facilitate communication. Your school relies on local support to achieve its mission and must effectively communicate with different groups to gain their confidence in your school’s ability to educate students and manage finances. Another Pew & American Life Project survey found that parents with children under the age of 18 were more likely to use the Internet than adults having no children (70% v 53%). If you want to reach these parents, you need an Internet presence.
   
   
3. Websites are an effective vehicle to showcase student achievement. Research projects, presentations, book reviews, collaborative work, online discussion forums, artwork, poetry, videography, and music are a few suggestions for work that might be featured—projects ideas are limited only by your and your students’ imaginations. Using different formats to document learning creates a wider appeal for students as different modalities are engaged enabling a greater number of students to achieve. Be certain that when publishing student work, no personally identifying information (last name, phone number, picture, address) is included. For students under the age of 18, a Permission to Publish (http://supportnet.merit.edu/webclubs/permissionform.htm) form must be signed by a parent or guardian.
   
   
4. Websites are excellent student motivators. The web connects students to a wider audience. Having their work available online is very motivating to students, who strive to produce quality products that they can share with friends, family members, and other individuals in this global classroom. Students posting their work online have the potential of receiving feedback from a broader audience increasing opportunities to improve and enhance their learning. When students’ work is accessible to and used by a larger audience, students are motivated to greater achievement. They are more concerned about the quality and accuracy of their work knowing that it might be read and used by others. One elementary school teacher reported to Schofield & Davidson (2002) that involvement in a newsgroup “enhanced tenfold [my students’] enthusiasm for writing.” For examples of increased achievement read “WebBased Publishing” (http://www.publishingstudents.com/Web-basedpublishing.html).
   
   
5. Websites reduce printing, workload and costs. When materials are available online, staff hours and associated costs are reduced. The saved time and revenue can be reallocated to produce an efficient website and streamline administrative/parent communications.

Who is your target audience?

Once you have defined the purpose(s) of your school’s website, you will need to think about your target audience. Who do you want to visit your site? Such considerations will determine future steps and need to be determined early in the planning process. Having separate areas for different populations is an effective school website practice. Groups you might want to target could include:

Your website is a great place to begin to develop positive media interactions with your school. Approximately 75% of the news media use the Internet daily for their work. Your website is a valuable way to develop an active media relations program. Devoting a section of your site to the media is an excellent idea.

Features generally found in this area include:

• Fact Sheet
• Executive Biographies
• Press Releases
• News Articles
• Contact Information

Make this section of your site an easy place for the media to go to find information about your organization. Ensure that information can be easily found on your site. Prepare announcements regarding special developments, events, programs, accomplishments, or awards. This is a great area to communicate key messages about charter schools to help the media inform the public about this relatively new educational option.

What should be included on your school’s website?

School Introduction - mission, vision, curriculum offerings, etc. Target audiences Contact information Communication tools: email, bulletin boards, chat rooms, discussion groups School newsletter School calendar Classroom Areas Student work

Homework School surveys School forms Lunch menu Useful resources available on the web to support curriculum Links to community organizations Counter Date of most recent update

What else must be considered?

Communication: Since the primary purpose of your site is to convey information, careful consideration should be given to how to best format information for this purpose. Will you use words, pictures, sound, movies, simulations?

Navigation: Navigation describes how people move through your site. Navigation tools include items such as menus and buttons. The navigation tools you use on your site should be intuitive and consistent. Buttons and menus should look the same and should appear in the same location on each page of your site. Consistent, intuitive navigation provides a comfort level for your users, making it easier for them to find the information they need on your site.

Consistency: Consistency is another element that increases the comfort level of visitors to your site and increases the likelihood of return visits. Your site should have a unified theme and should use consistent elements to make users comfortable as they move throughout the site. Use the same font, style and size for titles, headings, subheads, captions, etc. throughout the site.

Color: Just because you have the whole palette of 216 web colors available does not give you the license to use them all. Use color sparingly; it’s best to limit the use of colors to 2 or 3.

Special Effects: Just like color, special effects should be used sparingly. Just because you or your web designer knows how to use them, doesn’t mean they should be used. Special effects (including images) should only be used when they enhance communication and do not significantly impact download time. Your site’s visitors are busy people who don’t have the time to wait around for your site to load. Even though the special effects included on a site may be well worth waiting for, most users will go somewhere else if a page is not displayed within a couple of seconds.

Text: Text must be easy to read. You need to keep the amount of text you use on a webpage to a minimum. Use bullets to aid in readability. For text heavy documents, create links to them and have users read them outside of the website. (Provide a link to download Adobe Acrobat. http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.) Tip: many readers, especially dyslexic readers, find the stark contrast of black letters on a white background hard to read and reverse text even more difficult. A pastel-colored background helps to reduce the contrast, as does avoiding ‘opposite’ colors such as red and green together, which appear to pulsate on the screen.

Are we done yet?

No! You will probably spend a lot of time developing your site. You want to make sure users come back, and come back often. You need to review the site regularly to make sure that they will. Your site’s content, navigability, functionality, and currency needs to be evaluated on a regular basis.

Content: Avoid adding any unnecessary content to the site. Superfluous information should be archived or deleted. Review the site for gaps and if any exist, fill them.

Navigation: Technology changes constantly; new tools and techniques are frequently available. Make sure that your navigation continues to be as simple as possible. Continue to analyze your content, looking for ways you can group similar items to make navigation more intuitive.

Functionality: Make sure that that everything works as it should and promptly fix any problems that arise. Look at the size of your site– are there ways of reducing it so it loads more quickly?

Currency: You want visitors to return to the site often. People coming to your website will expect current information. One way to encourage return visits is to frequently change and update the information available on your site. Implement a plan for how often the site will be updated and who will be responsible for the updates. Creating a website team will help keep the site current and will bring new ideas to the table. Some students have advanced computer skills. You might want to consider involving them in technical support and updates.

Much planning goes into the creation and maintenance of a school website. The time spent in planning and creating is minimal compared to the time you and your staff save once the site is complete. The benefits that your school will gain from the effort is tremendous in terms of marketing the school; facilitating communication between the school and students, parents, and community members; fostering positive media and community relationships; and providing resources, instruction and professional development.

Look for more on School Websites in the future editions of the NCSC News.

References:
Becta. (2003). Building an effective school website. Retrieved 10/15/04 from http://www.ictadvice.org.uk.

Larson, G., Nathan, J. (2004). Expanding the circle: charter schools & the news media. Retrieved 4/13/05 from http://www.hhh.umn.edu/centers/school-change/docs/media.pdf.

Rainie, Lee, Horrigan, John (2005). A decade of adoption: How the internet has woven itself into American life. Retrieved 4/8/05 from http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/Internet_Status_2005.pdf.

Weber, Chris. (2002). Publishing with students. Retrieved 4/13/05 from http://www.publishingstudents.com/index.htm.

Lynn Kepford, Director of the National Charter School Clearinghouse, has worked in the field of education for over 20 years and has a Masters degree in Education in the area of Educational Media and Computers.