Website Proposal
December 2012
Current Website Statistics
Statistic software runs constantly in the background of the school website to enable
us to analyse our website visitors, what pages are popular, the technology used to
view our website and much more.
Between 30th November 2012 and 30th December 2012, the website received a total
of 1,686 visitors. In total, 8,897 pages were viewed between them.
Of those 1,686 visits:
1,083 were unique visitors;
63.52% were returning visitors;
36.48% were new visitors;
1,641 visits were from computers within the UK;
6 visits were from computers within the USA;
13 visits were from computers within Australia;
390 unique visitors used a mobile device to access the website.
The majority of our visitors stay no longer than 2 minutes; however our bounce rate is
marked at 2%. This suggests that the 98% of visitors find what they are looking for
within the first two minutes of loading the website. The other 2% (the bounce rate)
are visitors who immediately identify the website is not what they are looking for (for
example an incorrect search in Google).
Our most popular area on the website is the Gallery page, followed by the Contact
page.
Our Target Audience
I am very much of the opinion that our academy website should not be focussed
towards visitors from foreign countries or even boroughs other than our own, but
more-so it should be focussed on our students, their parents and potential parents of
potential students. We should be providing them with information that advertises our
academy, whilst also providing a one-stop-shop for our existing students and parents
to ascertain information they want, quickly, easily and efficiently.
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Website Aim
Our website should reflect our academy entirely. It should be uniform with our
prospectus and it should help visitors understand our values and ethos simply from
the quality of the content they read. We want potential employees to want to work
at our academy from what they see and read on the website and we want parents
to feel like they have made the right choice when they are looking for their child’s
new school.
Parents spend a lot of time browsing websites when their child is moving school or
when their child is moving from their primary school in to secondary education. Our
neighbour schools all have a website too – but our website should make parents
stop and feel like Redcar Academy is the right place for their child. It should make
the child excited at the prospect of joining us and give them the feeling that they
know the academy well before they’ve started, making them more comfortable on
their first day. Giving parents the similar feeling as when looking to buy a new house;
walking into another house, and walking into somewhere that feels like a home –
instantly enables you to feel you’ve made the right choice. That is the feeling we
want them to have when they look at Redcar Academy.
We want to provide our employees, our parents and their children with useful
information, easily and effectively. Term holidays, policies, letters home, news and
images of what is happening within school.
A Quick Fix
The website currently lacks content. We need staff to report on the good things that
are happening in the academy. High quality photos are always a brilliant addition to
our gallery, but if an article is provided with those images we can create a whole
news article surrounding the topic. If we could update the news more often, it will
not only allow visitors to see what’s happening in the academy, but it also allows
them to identify that these good things are happening regularly.
I’ve listed items below that I could do “in-house” to our website to help improve it,
but essentially the website does need investment. Ideally, the prospectus and
website should match, complimenting each other.
What we can add or improve on our current website (please note: some of these
points may already be in action as of January 2013):
More information, such as term dates, letters home, policies and other useful
information and/or forms parents may need or want (such as Free School Meals
application);
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An events calendar, to include dates such as student review day;
An FAQ’s section to answer parent questions online and save them the time of
calling our reception to ask questions which are quite possibly asked often;
Split the website to easily identify information about our school and information for
parents. Cross-linking information wouldn’t be a problem but it allows for easier
navigation. Allowing people to see who it’s targeted for and find information easily.
People are more inclined to use a website more often if it’s easy to use.
Include more information about our subjects; maybe departmental brochures could
be included on a simple “Subjects” area under “Our Academy”;
Explore the possibility of including a blog, such as a Headteacher blog whereby the
headteacher can submit a monthly article for the website. It adds a nice personal
touch.
Include more aspects of social networking. More parents and students are now
using social networking as a method of keeping up-to-date. If all changes we made
were published on our Twitter feed, we’d manage to reach more parents and
students with that information. We’re taking the information to them, rather than
waiting for them to find it themselves.
Investment
The website has never received much investment in my time here and I have used
many of my skills to develop it as best I can, however some substantial investment is
required to move the website to the next level, especially to improve the
professionalism of the website from a design perspective – as we are now an
academy. I can use my skills to develop the programming framework behind the
design, but I am not a graphic designer.
Website design can be a costly project, but a design can change the way people
think. A well designed website should give the viewers a message about us as an
academy, without us having to write it in context. A professional, smart and elegant
website design will give across just that message. A well thought design that is easy
to navigate, informational and full of exciting images will promote our academy,
showing it to be the best that it is.
Many neighbouring schools are now investing in their website, as parents are using
school websites more than ever. Technology is so advanced that websites are now
accessible from home or on the move from a mobile phone. If parents want
information, the first place they think of is the website. The website is just as much
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“front” for the school as the building itself or the prospectus.
Costs
It is always difficult to ascertain exact pricing for website design because it depends
on many different factors once a decision has been made with a specific company.
They will work to ascertain exact requirements and additional charges may be
incurred along the way should functionality need changing or the original
specification is changed midway through the project.
I have gained three proposals from different companies of which a brief summary
can be found below. All costing’s are approximate, subject to negotiation and
exact requirements. These costs are for the website only, prospectus costs are
separate.
Cleverbox, a design company who specialise in educational websites; they are a
mid-sized company with two offices in Durham and Bromley. The proposal contains
a costing structure so we can decide on the functionality we want and effectively
work our price from those figures. Adding all features in that I think we would need,
the total is £9758. This is subject to change following a full identification of
requirements. We will also pay a £600 annual maintenance charge. Cleverbox have
specified they can design our prospectus alongside a website; however they didn’t
provide a cost at the time of proposal. Cleverbox use their own content
management system and therefore we will need to ensure we were up-to-date with
their software. The website would be hosted on their servers. They have worked with
many educational websites, primarily focussing recently on re-designing school
websites which have now been made Academy. They have multiple case studies
which are attached to their proposal. They have recently re-designed neighbouring
school, Rye Hills’ website and their portfolio boasts many school websites. They have
been recommended on a few occasions within the IT support network.
Mixd, a design company whom have no specific target audience; they are based
in Harrogate with a team of four. They have submitted a proposal with a costing of
approximately £9,000 for a website re-design and £1,800 if we wanted to add a
prospectus design to the project. They anticipate the project would take 3 months
to complete. They also charge a monthly maintenance cost at £10 per month for
telephone support and £60-£450 per month for a maintenance agreement,
depending on the package we choose – although looking through their packages I
don’t believe any will be suitable to us. The website could be hosted on our own
servers, they will provide us with the theme files to install. Mixd don’t specialise in
educational websites however have worked for clients such as NHS. They also have
a list of case studies attached to their proposal and they re-designed the website of
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neighbouring academy Nunthorpe Academy. I found few recommendations for this
company in the IT support network.
E4Education, a design company which specialise in educational websites, based in
Peterborough with 11 years of experience behind them. They have submitted a
proposal with a costing of approximately £9600, recommending this package as the
most suitable for future proofing the website. They offer their own content
management system and therefore the website would need to be hosted on their
servers and we would need to pay an annual maintenance cost of £600.
Advantages & Disadvantages
Please see the following page for an advantages and disadvantages table.
Recommendation
It is of my recommendation that should we decide to outsource the website design
to one of these companies, we should choose Cleverbox. They appear to be a
smart, well organised team of designers who know their focus. Their portfolio is
outstanding, with some beautiful designs that definitely stand out. Their content
management system appears easy to use and flexible and they come with high
recommendations from IT professionals in the education IT sector all over the
country.
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Advantages and Disadvantages
Company
Cleverbox
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Advantages
Specialises in educational design.
Regular updates to software.
Future-proof.
Flexible and adaptable, bespoke.
Closed based company office, in Durham (35
mile).
Over 11 years of experience.
Large, successful portfolio.
No annual maintenance costs.
High profile clients in portfolio.
Close based company, operating from
Harrogate (50 mile).
Large, successful portfolio.
WordPress supportive.
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Specialises in educational design.
24/7 support.
Flexible and adaptable, bespoke.
12 years of experience.
Large, successful portfolio.
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Mixd
E4 Education
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Disadvantages
Annual maintenance costs.
Hosted services solution only.
Dosen’t support WordPress framework.
Most expensive.
Doesn’t specialise in education website
design.
Small team of staff.
Costly support packages, covering only
normal working hours.
Hosted services solution.
Based in Peterborough which is
approximately (200 miles approx).
Hosted services solution only.
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