A school website acts as the shop window for a school, college or university – it’s a small snapshot of what the establishment promises prospective students and parents, as well as a hub for information.
Although a school website is an opportunity for an education provision to sell their school’s values and ethos, far too many school websites are not fit for purpose. Many schools see their school website as simply an Ofsted box ticking exercise, rather than an opportunity to increase their enrolment numbers, improve brand perception and communicate their values.
There is a pattern of common errors frequently found on school websites. Avoiding these common pitfalls is the first step to ensuring a school website goes beyond being just Ofsted compliant to outperforming local competitors and increasing enrolment numbers, plus improving relationships with the local community.
Many schools don’t invest the time and money into building and maintaining a functional website. This leads to websites that aren’t fit for purpose, which drives current students and parents mad whilst driving prospective students to another school. Schools can avoid these common pitfalls to ensure their website outperforms their competitors.
Schools are responsible for the security of huge amounts of sensitive data, including students’ and teachers’ personal information. Failure to keep this data safe can result in substantial fines and legal ramifications. A school website can help maintain security by avoiding these common security pitfalls:
A common error found with school website security is weak access controls. This includes poorly managed password policies (e.g. not frequently changing passwords and using simple passwords), a lack of two-factor authentication and not managing user roles (i.e. setting every user as an admin with full access to data).
Should a school experience a data breach, most do not have a response plan in place to react to the incident. This results in a slow response, allowing hackers to gather more data before the breach is closed.
A consistent data backup plan is essential for ensuring there is little to no data lost should an incident happen, such as a ransomware attack or catastrophic system failure.
Making a school website accessible to disabled users is essential for making sure everyone has an equal opportunity to access the information. A school should make every effort to ensure disabled and visually impaired users can navigate and use their website, avoiding these common mistakes:
Not providing alt text for images means users reliant on screen readers will not be able to access the content and context of images on the page.
Using text and background colours with insufficient contrast can impact visually impaired users, making it difficult (or even impossible) to read the text on the website. The WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) mandates minimum contrast ratios for text to help guide websites when it comes to text legibility.
Users that rely on their keyboard to navigate websites (due to mobility or motor impairments) can become trapped on a website that doesn’t offer keyboard navigation. This can lead to some users being completely unable to navigate to certain parts of the school website and access important information.
School websites that regularly release news and updates via a PDF format are, knowingly or not, excluding users who are reliant on screen readers. As a PDF is essentially an image file, screen readers find it difficult to parse the information within the file, meaning users reliant on this technology will be excluded from important information.
A website that is difficult to navigate can be extremely frustrating. Not only will users go to a different website to find the information they were looking for, but they may discredit the entire school based on the experience they receive navigating the website. Steering clear of these navigation issues can help a school website become more navigable for users:
Putting the wrong information under the wrong menu headers can seriously hinder a user looking for something specific. Ensuring menus are labelled correctly and intuitively is key to making a website user friendly and navigable.
Users are accustomed to using a search bar to find the specific information they need on a website. Not including a search function on a school website will make it much harder for users to find the information they need quickly.
Breadcrumbs enable users to easily navigate back through pages in an intuitive way. Not including these as a navigation aid can seriously hinder the usability of a website.
Even if a school website is well-designed, accessible and easy to navigate, if the content itself is poor then the website isn’t serving the purpose it was meant to – marketing the school to prospective students. Avoiding these content issues can help create a school website that is both functional and engaging:
A school website that doesn’t publish school news and blog content is missing out on the opportunity to broadcast success stories and achievements. A lack of content will also hinder a website’s ability to be found through search engines such as Google.
Missing or incorrect information can make content on a school website confusing. Keeping information up to date on a school website will ensure prospective students and parents have the latest facts.
Top quality content is only useful if it is still up to date and relevant. Not updating the content on a school website can lead to confusing messages and conflicting information.
A responsive design on a website makes it easier and smoother to navigate on desktop and mobile devices alike, ensuring the user experience stays consistent no matter what device the user is on. Some of the most common design errors to avoid are:
A website that isn’t optimised for mobile devices will run into issues when mobile users navigate the site. This can lead to page designs breaking completely, which can cause information to be displayed incorrectly or being omitted entirely.
Websites that are built with only desktop users in mind will more than likely encounter slow load times on mobile devices. This will lead to more bounce rates, search engines ranking the website lower and frustration from users (which will reduce their likelihood of engaging with the website).
These common errors that are prevalent on school websites might seem insignificant, but when combined they can seriously impact the performance of a website (and ultimately damage a school’s reputation).
One of the biggest consequences of having errors and issues on a school website is that parents and students will mistrust the school. Afterall, if a school doesn’t have the time, money or resources available to create a fully functional website and keep it up to date, why would they have the resources available to run a school smoothly? This lack of trust can hamper enrolment efforts and damage perception of the school in the local community.
Accessibility and navigation issues will lead to a poor user experience on the website overall. This poor user experience directly translates into reputation and brand perception, driving prospective students to a competing school with a more functional website.
Multiple site errors and content issues will be met with penalties from search engines such as Google. Google rewards websites for providing relevant content for users that is both engaging and intuitive to navigate by ranking those webpages higher. A website with multiple errors will be harder to search for or may not even appear in a search engine at all.
A school’s website is the biggest opportunity to advertise what the establishment stands for and the culture it embodies. Communicating the school’s culture and ethos allows parents to clearly see whether their children would enjoy attending the school or not. Without a functional school website, parents are left in the dark as to what the school feels like for students. This lack of messaging will deter parents from enrolling their children, thus affecting a school’s enrolment figures.
Even if a school website doesn’t knowingly exclude disabled and impaired users, errors in the design itself can create issues of inequality. Not only does this reflect badly on a school’s reputation and treatment of those with disabilities, it can affect the implementation of a school’s accessibility plan – an Ofsted requirement.
By avoiding these commonly overlooked issues, school websites can be designed not only to keep Ofsted happy, but to appeal to prospective parents and their children. Through creating and maintaining a functional and professional looking website, schools can make their brand stand out from the competition and ultimately increase enrolment figures.
Need help with a school website design that outperforms the competition? Get in touch with us today to discuss a brand-new website.