School Websites Should be Better Than This One (in Five Steps)

I know, you're thinking that your school website IS better than some blog website. Maybe. Maybe not. If you can't access your school website on a mobile phone, then this free Blogger site could be just as good, and that's really sad, since this is one of 20 websites I run, and your school just has the one. And it's the one every potential student and parent sees. Every current customer accesses. It's your public profile, not just for your building, but for all the teachers doing their best to educate the children. Your school deserves better than this.

Step 1
Check to see if your website is indeed mobile friendly, even if your sales rep has assured you it is. Sure, you might have a Wordpress, Joomla, or asp website, and it might be a CMS, but does it load properly on any device? You don't need a separate mobile page or some gimmicky app. Just a website anyone can see well on any device.

Step 2
If your website does not check out, it might not be that big of a deal. It could just be the theme or template that's older. Sometimes, all you have to do is ask. There's even a simple way to make Google Sites mobile friendly (oddly, they are not by default).

If your website does check out, then check the speed. People tend to navigate away if the site takes too long, even if it looks glorious once there.

Step 3
Update your website with news. Some schools want to send out newsletters only, and this works for current students, but past and future students are left out, and in some ways, those are the folks who are currently most important to your web presence. Besides, how often do you read newsletters in your inbox? When I need info, I check websites instead of searching my emails.

Step 4
If all else fails, hire a good freelance web designer. That's what I do for a living, and I am much better at helping schools than some large corporation that is more concerned with new sales than making sure you are happy. It's likely a parent at the school or maybe a teacher could handle building and maintaining your website. I was a teacher for years, and my websites were always better than the ones my school used, and I built them for a fraction of the cost. You don't need some large firm that works for huge corporations. You can see my work at Passive Ninja, Luthernet, and Brave New Church, but I'm not necessarily looking for a job from you...just letting you know we exist.

Step 5
Wait, before you hire someone, try to fix that old website again. Or have the freelancer do it. The reason is that whatever old content you have should be transferred or redirected into the new website. A lot of established websites make the mistake of updating without migrating, and that ends up with many missed opportunities. You might not realize that your article about some school project back in 2011 gets twenty hits a month, and those will all disappear if you start over from scratch, so find out what you need to do in order to upgrade without losing what you have.

That's mostly it. Not nearly as difficult as trigonometry.