There's simply nothing more important to our schools' marketing plans than a really good web page. Back in the early 1990's, I learned a little bit about HTML so I could create a web page for our school; these days, however, that's no longer necessary, as there are many services "out there" who will help us create beautiful pages and maintain them with no coding experience required. Even so, I believe good school web pages have the following characteristics:
First, they are highly visual, with the image(s) or video comprising 50-70% of the page. Too much text virtually guarantees that people won't spend much time on our site--there's simply too many more interesting things out there. For what I consider some excellent visual school sites, go to http://www.am-hs.org/, or http://groton.org/, or http://www.saa-sds.org/. Large pictures tell a compelling story--make sure the diversity and balance of your pictures tells the right story, without an disproportionate share of athletic pictures, for example.
Second, school web pages should feature an up-to-date, all purpose calendar, including all school and athletic events. This is the "driver" of traffic onto your site--parents need information about upcoming games, theater events, parent-teacher nights. Schools must make this available to them in an easy to find, easy to read format.
Third, school pages should highlight contact information for teachers and administrators. Schools should invite parents to contact their teachers via email--it's the most efficient means of information swapping--and cuts down on interruptions. But for too many web pages, it's a game of hide and seek to find that information. It shouldn't be.
Fourth, I believe our web pages should contain "good news" stories about the school, via links on the front page ( see http://ideasincatholiceducation.blogspot.com/2013/10/marketing-on-shoestring.html ). The theory here is much like the design of a grocery store: When people come to the grocery store for a single item, they're usually on the hunt for something like milk or eggs. That's why the milk is usually in the back of the store--to get there, the shopper must "collide" with all sorts of sales displays which will hopefully entice him to buy more stuff. People don't come onto our web page to read our news stories, but to check dates and times. When they do, we want them to "collide" with good news about the school, so they can share this news with others.
Fifth, web pages should contain a gallery with lots of pictures and movie clips--homecoming events, football games, the latest pep rally or 8th grade visit. Perhaps it's a sign of our own vanity, but we love to look at ourselves and our children on line! If a school wants to drive traffic to its site, it needs to take a lot of pictures and post a lot of videos. These need not be of the professional variety! It's almost more authentic when it's unprofessional--what we can generate with iphones and post on google galleries or youtube pages is usually good enough. I'd also warehouse your school's newsletters on line--you can give the good news stories within a longer shelf life.
Sixth, school pages should have a place where all routine forms--permission slips, driver's license certification forms, physicals, etc are housed. We shouldn't be chasing paper anymore, or using fax machines to shuffle forms back and forth. Fax machines are a 1990's technology!
Seventh, our pages should link to all social media sites the school maintains. These sites should be, at minimum, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter. The object is to have all of these platforms criss-crossing the other, driving traffic in multiple directions so as to tell the school's story.
Eighth, our school web pages should provide somewhere, a "Quick Facts" section or something like it where all the school's statistics can be located. This is both for the type-A parent who is comparison shopping schools, but it's also for reasons of institutional control. Educational statistics can be manipulated and misunderstood, so I prefer to be the person who puts these statistics together, and I refer all people who write stories or grants for us to use the statistics on this page. For an example of such a page, here's what we do: http://jp2hs.org/about/quick-facts/
Ninth, our pages should include employment opportunities. If we have openings, we can wax on eloquently about the positions we have open and the advantages of teaching in our school, so that when we post openings in parish bulletins, or in diocesan weeklies, or on national web sites, we need only post the link to the opening. In addition, I believe the task to find good teachers is an on-going one, so I encourage interested prospects to apply, even if we don't have a current position open! The bigger the pool of resumes we receive, the better our chances of finding a truly superb teacher.
Tenth I believe our web sites should give what I call "consumer" information to prospective and current families. This includes all tuition and fee costs, a copy of our student handbook of all school policies, (it saves money to simply publish these on line), a "curricular guide" that explains our academic program, and information about extra-curricular events. Keeping all this available on line helps our families find the information they need--and cuts down on the volume of phone calls to our receptionist! Do her a favor!
I am not suggesting our web site is perfect, but we've tried to put all these suggestions together here.
One final piece. Do you want to save money? Prices vary wildly between school web design vendors--depending on whether you want to use a company's existing templates or design your own page, which could cost as much as (literally) fifty thousand dollars. The best value I can find out there for Catholic schools is from the guys at http://www.ecatholicwebsites.com/, a company that works with Catholic schools and churches. They will allow you to use their existing templates for a $100 set up fee and a $20/month maintenance fee (these are insanely low prices). Or, they'll help you design your own site for $2500 The last time we designed our school web site, it cost us $25,000, and the time before that, it cost $15,000!
I've looked over institutions that have used their services, and they're quite attractive, such as here (http://www.usordinariate.org/) or here: http://www.dioceseofnashville.com/ or a Catholic school here: http://www.hccsf.org/ or here: http://www.pj23.org/. I recommend these guys highly.
Spend time on your web page before you spend any other monies for advertising. Everything else we might to advertise for our school pales in importance.
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