Best Practices for Building a School District Website
In this episode of the Foremost Media Marketing Chat podcast, Jon Ballard and Evan Facinger discuss the unique challenges and necessities for school district websites. They discuss the importance of user experience, ADA compliance, and how to effectively organize content to meet the needs of several different unique audiences.
The Importance of Flexibility and Functionality
Proprietary content management systems (CMS) are often far too limiting for what school districts need. We advocate for the flexibility of open-source platforms like WordPress. School websites need to be functional, easy to navigate, and tailored to the specific needs of students, parents, staff, and the community. There are several critical features of school district websites that need to be considered, including calendar integrations, news updates, and mobile-friendly design, ensuring that the site serves all users effectively.
Marketing and Branding for Schools
Jon and Evan also discuss the often-overlooked aspect of marketing in the education sector. They share examples of how schools, including virtual, private, and public institutions, can benefit from strategic marketing to drive enrollment and community engagement. They also touch on the importance of branding consistency, suggesting that schools develop clear brand guidelines to maintain a professional online presence.
Timestamps:
- 0:00 Intro
- 0:46 Organizing Information for Several Audiences at Once
- 5:26 Which Management Platform is Best?
- 8:45 Calendar Integration
- 10:28 Content Plugin for News & Updates
- 11:38 Misc Integrations: Links, Document Management, & Social Media
- 13:27 The Importance of Digital Marketing for School District Websites
- 14:59 Planning is Key
- 16:18 Have Consistent Brand Guidelines
- 17:07 Foremost Selected as UW's Primary Pre-Approved Vendor
- 18:21 Outro
Find more marketing insights and show notes here.
Transcript:
Evan Facinger: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Foremost Media Marketing Chat podcast. I’m excited to have this topic today, and with me, as always, is Jon Ballard. How are you, Jon?
Jon Ballard: Hey, good, Evan. Good to talk to you as usual. I'm excited about today's topic.
Evan Facinger: Yeah, this is one that we, as a company, have a lot of experience in, and you personally have a good amount of experience in it also. So, school district websites—what's unique about them? What should you look for when choosing a partner? The content management systems, the design, the overall user experience—there's a lot that goes into a school district website.
Jon Ballard: Yeah, it's interesting. We've done quite a few of them over the years, and the first question I usually ask is, how do you want to organize this? A lot of districts have a main website, but then they have elementary schools, middle schools, high schools. How do you organize all that information and make sure the right users are finding the right information? And who's going to update it? There's a lot that goes into figuring out what platform we should use and how we're going to structure it. One of the things we should talk about right away is how users access the school site. We've found over the years that there are kind of four audiences: students, parents, the community, and the staff. Most school districts have a fairly large staff, so that's a pretty big audience. Parents and community members all have an interest in the school district website, so you have to appeal to all of them, which is kind of unique in marketing.
Evan Facinger: Yeah, and I think that is what makes it the most unique, having so many things put together on one site, even though it's going to be multiple sites because you have very different audiences that need a lot of different information. They're looking for lunch menus, contact information, checking the school calendars—all of that needs to be on the school district websites. But then it's broken up, like you said, into different types of schools: multiple elementary, middle, and high schools in the same area. All of those things need to come together. What do you usually recommend when someone is looking to redesign their school district website with all those factors in mind?
Jon Ballard: I think the next question to answer before that is “how are we going to organize this?” Is it going to be one giant site all crammed together, or is each school going to have its own site or a section of the main site? What we found typically works best is one main domain with all the schools, but each school has its own dedicated section with a sub-menu. For example, in Janesville, when you're in Craig High School, you can navigate around the sub-menu for Craig High School specifically. There's a main district menu with information for everyone, and sub-menus to help you navigate within each school. Because inside a particular school, a high school could have basketball, football, baseball, and so could the other high school in town or so could the middle school. You don't want to cram it all into one site typically. Does that answer your question?
Evan Facinger: Yeah, I think it answers it enough when it comes to “what do you recommend?” And that is the planning, making sure you've got a plan for how you want to break everything up. Maybe smaller school districts can get away with certain things that larger school districts wouldn't be able to. Would you agree with that?
Jon Ballard: Yeah, that's for sure. I mean, if there's only one elementary and one high school, one site might be fairly straightforward. But a school district like Janesville, the seventh largest in the state, has a lot of different schools and audiences. This is a good topic for industrial manufacturing, for example. Who are your audiences? Should we be building sections to answer questions for those audiences? It's an interesting topic that can actually relate to a lot of different industries.
Evan Facinger: Building the website with the user in mind is always going to be the most important thing you can do when designing it. A lot of agencies, not to put ourselves down because we don't do this, but a lot of agencies want to win awards and have the best-looking website. But sometimes it doesn't matter really that it's the flashiest website. In fact, most of the time, it doesn't matter that it’s a flashy website. It needs to be a functional website, it needs to be easy for people to use, find the information they want, and take the next step. Eliminate all the friction that has to use a cognitive load to figure out how to use the website that sometimes increases when it’s a flashy design.
Jon Ballard: Yeah, and schools have to deal with things like ADA compliance and stuff like that, so sometimes flashy isn't always the best for those things either.
Evan Facinger: The other thing when you're talking about design is mobile. That is going to be highly used, at least by the parents and the students a lot of times also. You need to make sure that you have a mobile design that's easy to use and easy to find information. Looking at the analytics for these sites, you see a lot of mobile traffic for this particular audience.
Jon Ballard: Yeah, school districts are very high in mobile. Once we've decided on the audience and how we're going to navigate the menus, the next thing to decide is what platform we’re going to use to manage the site. There are a lot of options out there. There are proprietary CMSs like CMS for Schools and others that specialize in school websites. There's WordPress, which is our favorite. What else is out there? You have Umbraco you could use; it kind of depends on your needs.
Evan Facinger: Yeah, it depends on the needs and budget, of course. How do you want to manage the site afterward? Do you want to own the website? We see a lot of proprietary systems like the ones you mentioned, and a few other big players in the industry. But you never own the website. Often, you're left with a template website that you can't really update. We usually recommend going with more of an open-source content management system like WordPress.
Jon Ballard: We do prefer WordPress. It's very flexible with a lot of plugins and modules you can use. You can even set up user access, so if you want different people to update the high school versus the middle school versus the elementary school, you can set up those controls. At the end of the day, WordPress is probably the most popular CMS out there, and you're not locked into a proprietary system. There's no cost in purchasing or maintaining it, and you’re not stuck with specific functionalities you can't change. If you ever want to leave, good luck; you have to start over.
Evan Facinger: That's a good point. It's a website that your district actually owns. Instead of paying a monthly fee in perpetuity, you have a website. You'll need hosting, but that's a much smaller cost than leasing a website. It offers a lot more ability to scale, at least in my opinion, because you need a lot of features now, and there could be more features you want to add in the future. If you change your school management system or any other software, how is it going to integrate? With WordPress being the most popular content management system and being open source, it offers a lot of opportunities to ensure it always works well with what you need it to do.
Jon Ballard: Absolutely. That's just it. A lot of these proprietary CMSs are really rigid. If you want your calendar to work a different way, or your lunch menu, or any of those types of things, you're pretty well stuck. You just have to use what they have or the updates they provide. WordPress gives you that flexibility. But I was going to say, WordPress is something you do have to maintain. Don't just set up your site, leave it on a server, and forget about it. There are updates all the time for any content management system these days, and someone needs to be in charge of making sure that happens.
Evan Facinger: Yeah, that's a great point. It’s the same with any content management system or any website in general. You need to make sure that you are maintaining everything, whether it's for security vulnerabilities or just ensuring that everything is updated and working properly. Having eyes on it is crucial. No website should be set and forget.
Jon Ballard: I agree. So, what's important for a school district website as far as content, modules, and what should you install and use?
Evan Facinger: Well, one thing you mentioned a little bit, which I think is worth diving into more, is calendar integration. From what I've seen, that is one of the more commonly used features on a website. People want to see what's going on and what's happening. Any suggestions you have there?
Jon Ballard: One hundred percent. Calendars are probably one of the most popular destinations on the websites I've seen, done, and been a part of. The big thing is you need to be able to filter your calendar. We've developed a really nice calendar for schools that works really well. Basically, you have to be able to filter by the high school, middle school, or elementary school if you're a main district site with a bunch of schools. Parents should be able to dive down and see what's going on at their particular school. You want to filter by district-wide events or maybe by sports. There are a lot of different ways to filter, but it should be easy for a parent to go in and say, "Okay, I want this high school football schedule." They shouldn't have to go to 16 different pages to see that; they should be able to find it in the central calendar within a few clicks. That's one of the most important things. We see frustrations when people come to us to work on their school district site and their calendar is a mess. They try to use Google Calendar or something like that, and it doesn't display well or look good on mobile. How can we fix this? Filtering is my number one suggestion.
Evan Facinger: Yeah, and as a parent who has to go to school district websites, I certainly agree with that. A lot of times, you're just trying to remember all the different schedules you have, or even double-checking that the dates you were given by your child are correct. It makes it a lot easier when the calendar is set up with proper filtering and is easy to use and mobile-friendly.
Evan Facinger: You know, everything we've already been talking about, the other thing I think is important is having a good section for news and updates. Things that can be displayed there, whether it's district-wide announcements or school-specific ones, are similar to the calendar but focus more on announcements versus schedules.
Jon Ballard: Yeah, there's always news going on at schools. A lot of schools have just kind of taken to Facebook for that news, but it's not really easy to find and organize there. It's just kind of whatever the latest post was, and then a bunch of scrolling. A good news or announcement module can have filtering by school, date, sport, or event—whatever you need. One of the things we've done with the news, events, and calendaring modules we use for schools is allowing teachers or the public to suggest news and upload it. Then it goes to an administrator who can approve and edit it before it goes live. This takes some of the work off of administrators. They can have their users push that stuff into the website, and then they can edit it and make sure it goes in the right spot versus having to build it all. These are some cool tools for schools for editing and collecting user feedback.
Evan Facinger: Yeah, and another feature that we see a lot of times and is very important is links to other resources. The website's not going to have everything you need, but it should be the hub to get you everywhere you need to go. Whether you have different links for forms, policies, other educational materials, or software for looking at grades or putting money on lunch accounts—all of those need to be easy to find as well.
Jon Ballard: Absolutely. And another big one is schools love PDFs. A good document management system should be in place for downloading permission slips, forms, and those types of things. This should be part of the CMS and part of the planning. How do we make sure they're up to date, maintain them, and get rid of them when they're old? How do we organize the file structure? Some kind of file management system is really important for schools as well.
Evan Facinger: The nice part about having a system like WordPress is that the content management system allows you to have all of those different features, and they're customizable too. You can make sure that they're going to work for you versus just having a general setup that you have to force to fit your needs.
Jon Ballard: Another feature that schools are using and moving towards is social media integration. A lot of times, we'll see feeds from their YouTube channel or Facebook page well-organized on the website. They can pull in individual feeds. My son's a football player, so they can pull the Facebook feed for the booster club or the football team right onto the football page on the website. This keeps the content fresh because a lot of those clubs and organizations use social media. It's another nice feature to include in a district site.
Evan Facinger: What about marketing? Do you see that ever being a focus or a need for school districts when they're working on the website plan?
Jon Ballard: You read my mind. I think I was going to talk about that next. A lot of people don't think school districts need to market, but the reality is a lot of them do. For example, there's a school we worked with recently that had a virtual school. To get funding, they needed a certain number of students, so they hired us to help market the virtual school and drive registrations to achieve the funding they needed. That's a good example of marketing that wasn't just through social media but also paid ads and other methods. Another example might be a private school that needs to recruit an audience, making it important to get in front of the right parents. There are a lot of options and needs for marketing, believe it or not.
Evan Facinger: Yeah, and school districts in general often need to go through referendums. When you have a website that markets your school district well, showcasing all the benefits you provide to the community, it gives you a better chance of that referendum passing.
Jon Ballard: Absolutely. We've been a part of quite a few different school district referendum campaigns, doing advertising and other efforts. That advertising is usually paid for by a third-party group interested in seeing the referendum pass. There are many needs out there for that, so we can certainly help if you're looking to get a referendum passed in your district.
Evan Facinger: Yep, I think we've covered a lot with websites and marketing. Is there anything else you'd want to add when considering redesigning a website?
Jon Ballard: I think planning is key, and maybe user testing when you get it all done. Make sure that elementary school kids can use it, all the way up to high school kids. Test it with some parent groups, get good feedback before you go live, and ensure you haven't overlooked anything. School districts get a lot of publicity and eyeballs. When it goes live, it has to be right, or you're going to get negative feedback. Parents are quick to complain, haha.
Evan Facinger: Yeah, making sure you have the plan and everything else is crucial. I also recommend having contact information and a staff directory as part of the website. It makes it easier to complain, I guess, if you don't do a good job on it. User testing is important, and I'm glad you brought that up. You have so many different audiences and use cases. That's why we recommend putting together user stories—mapping out what type of users are going there and how they will use the site. This is all part of the planning process to ensure that people can easily find what they're looking for when they land on your website, regardless of what type of visitor they are.
Jon Ballard: Another thing some school districts have overlooked in the past, but is starting to change, is having marketing roles or someone in charge of communications. Many schools didn't have brand guidelines, leading to sites with Comic Sans fonts and random gifs. Schools nowadays need to look professional. You should have brand guidelines, including the fonts, logos, and colors to use. It might be handy for the community to download logos and see your brand guidelines and colors.
Evan Facinger: Yeah, definitely. Keeping it consistent is important for any type of branding. Having those guidelines available makes it a lot easier for people to follow.
Jon Ballard: I'm going to give you a shameless plug I'm kind of proud of—we were just recently selected by the University of Wisconsin as a primary pre-approved vendor. Look for some of our work coming from UW soon. So, we'd love to help you guys out if you're in a school, college, high school, elementary district, or private school. We've seen a lot and done a lot, and we'd love to be of service if you're looking to redesign a website or aren't happy with the site you have. Keep us in mind.
Evan Facinger: Yep, even if you're just looking for a plan or the best way to do it, we're happy to assist with the knowledge that we have and see how we can come together on that.
Jon Ballard: And if you've been living under a rock or you're a communications person for a school and you haven't addressed ADA compliance, that's something you need to look at yesterday. We've seen and been part of situations where schools get demand letters and things like that. It's not a good situation, so make sure you're looking at that stuff.
Evan Facinger: Yeah, better to do it now than wait until you get one of those letters.
Jon Ballard: Exactly. That's all I've got today. Anything else you want to talk about?
Evan Facinger: That's all I have too. So, if you're listening, just make sure that you like and subscribe to the podcast. We'll be talking soon.
Jon Ballard: Alright, see ya. Thanks, everybody.
Zach Baierl: Thanks for listening to the Foremost Media Marketing Chat podcast. If you want to stay on top of your marketing game, make sure to like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. For more episodes, show transcripts, and marketing insights, go to foremostmedia.com.