Utilizing School Websites for Better Engagement

Welcome to School Leader Soundbites, a podcast dedicated to empowering K-12 leaders with the latest insights and strategies in marketing and communications! On today's episode, we're exploring a vital tool in our communication arsenal: school websites. In the digital era, a school's website is more than just an information hub; it's a dynamic platform for engagement and community building.

• The Role of School Websites in Today’s Education Landscape
  • A school website is often the first point of contact for parents, students, and the community. It sets the tone for your school's image and is a critical resource for engagement.
  • Professional Insight
• Key Elements of an Effective School Website
  • User-Friendly Design
  • Updated Content
  • Interactive Features
  • Visual Appeal
  • Accessibility and Inclusivity
•  Best Practices and Success Stories
  • Case Study/Success Story 

As we wrap up, remember that your school's website is a powerful engagement tool. It's the digital face of your school and a key part of your communication strategy. Share this episode with your colleagues if you found it insightful.

And if you have any questions or suggestions for future topics, I'm here to listen. Thanks for tuning in to School Leader Soundbites.

Connect with Veronica here: https://www.veronicavsopher.com/

Social: @VeronicaVSopher

K12 Insight partners with schools and districts to build stronger relationships with parents, students, and staff. They believe that trust is the foundation of successful education, and their solutions are designed to foster engagement, promote transparency, and turn feedback into actionable results.

Want to explore the impactful ways Let's Talk and K12 Insight's comprehensive suite of customer service solutions can amplify your school's efforts and strategic goals? Get an in-depth look at how these tools can benefit your district, visit go.k12insight.com/sopher

Transcript

Veronica Sopher: 0:07
Hello, hello, and welcome to School Leader Soundbites. I'm your host, Veronica Sopher. And today we're going to be talking about websites and how to make sure that we're utilizing them to their fullest potential. We certainly want to foster engagement, and we want to give people the information they need. So we're going to be talking about utilizing school websites for better engagement. But before we get started, I want to make sure we take care of some housekeeping. If you're listening on the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe, we don't want you to miss any episodes of school leader sound bites, if you're watching on Facebook, or YouTube, drop me some comments so that I can connect with you and make sure that I answer any questions that you might have. So with that, let's dive right into school websites. Now, they're more than just an information hub. They are dynamic, they need to be engaging and building upon strategies that you have. But more importantly, they need to be appealing to people, because we know that visually, if they're not appealing, people are going to just scroll right through the information they missed, be frustrated, and then make sure that they form an opinion about it and tell everyone. So you want to make sure that your website is engaging, it's appealing, and it's got all the elements to make sure that your parents and your community members are getting the information that they need. So let's talk about the role of a website in today's educational landscape, it has shifted significantly from the last 10 years. It is your first point of contact, it is often where people go to do their research, instead of picking up the phone and calling, they will go to the website first to try to get some information and if they can't find it, then they will certainly pick up the phone and call. So you want to make sure that it is a tool that's being utilized, because it is your first impression. We want to make sure that it's got all of your branding materials. That it is strategic, that the content that's on there is intentional, and that it is certainly bringing value to the user. So you want to make sure you're looking through that lens when you look at your website. I know a lot of us are going through website migrations. I'm working with about a dozen school districts across the country who are migrating to different platforms or who are updating their websites and they're having to really dig into some pages that they didn't even know existed. So we're going to talk a little bit about how to go through that migration process and best practices, especially in today's world. So we know that a website design is important. There was a recent study by the Mathematica Policy Research Group and in this study, they found that parents directly derive their opinion, that leads to trust, from the website. So that that means the appeal of the website, the design, how accurate the information was, were there technical errors, grammatical errors on the website, that plays a huge part in how they perceive your district, especially when they're district shopping. As families have more choices today, they're certainly utilizing the websites as a way to measure one district to another. So you want to make sure that it's on point, that it's got all current information, and that you are giving people the information they want when they go to your website. So I can tell you that I've gone into districts as not only a staff member, but as a consultant and the first thing I do is look at the website. And if I see technical or grammatical errors, I know that there's going to be missing information, I know that there's going to be outdated information. Certainly, when we go in and do an audit, those are the things that we find. So we want to make sure that people's perceptions are validated by the content that you put on your website, you want to make sure that calendars are updated, that phone numbers are correct, that the staff links are correct. There's nothing like going to a campus website and seeing that the principal's photo is from two principalships ago. That is not okay, folks, we need to make sure that those pictures are current, that the contact information is current, and that people have multiple ways of getting in touch with someone, whether that's by email, by social media handle or by phone. So you want to make sure that there are multiple ways and make it a standard across all of your teacher sites, across all of your department head sites, and for any other type of curricular folks that you've got working in the district, you want to make sure that people can easily get a hold of the right person in the district. We want to make sure that we are growing trust with our website. We want to build upon trust on the website. And so that accurate information making sure that it's clear and concise and is found in multiple places is going to help drive that trust. We want it to be interactive. We want it to be easy to navigate. So we want to make sure that all the navigation is intuitive and a great way to test that, especially if you're not in a position to create a website audit, is to just bring in some folks, both internally and externally, and have them just do a little focus group with you. Have them navigate the website and tell you where they thought a piece of information should be, versus maybe where they found it. So focus groups, even if they're just, you know, a dozen folks, can really give you some insight into help you build the architecture of your website or modify if possible. Now, many of us are working on websites that come from website companies that have templates. So if you don't have the ability to customize, make sure you pick a template that will speak to your community's needs. Because what a template might be beneficial to a district in one part of the country, may not be as beneficial to a district on the other part of the country. So look at all the different templates, but go to your users and find out what it is they want to find, how they want to find it, and when they want to find it to help you pick a template that is going to be a good fit for you. So some key elements of an effective school website are going to be user-friendly design, which means it's easy to navigate, it's intuitive, people know where to go, it's accessible on lots of devices, that means it looks really good on a mobile view and then it also looks good on a desktop view. So you want to make sure that you're testing it on both a desktop and a mobile, because parents are often checking their email going to the website when they're in transit. Maybe when they're in between meetings, or maybe at the end of the day when they're on their couch watching TV. So we know that iPads and mobile devices are gonna be really important to the way our website comes across to user. So user-friendly design, updated content, we talked about that. Don't have calendars that are two or three years old, there's nothing more frustrating than being a parent and going to look for a calendar and seeing that it's the wrong year. So you want to make sure that when you are working with your campuses, maybe during the summer, you give them a checklist of all the things that they need to do to update their campus website. Are the staff members correct? Are there photos for everyone are the room numbers or the telephone numbers to that teacher's room still valid? Are their calendars updated? Are their project lists updated? All those kinds of things, give them a checklist, because they're going to be really thankful that you gave them a step-by-step process to make sure that the content that they're providing to their parents and to their students is accurate and timely. You want to also make sure you have an interactive feature, is it easy for them to just quickly click on something and connect with someone making sure that you're tapping into some of that technology that already exists, that visual appeal is also going to be important. When you can use student photos that are not stock photos, I highly recommend that you do that, because parents love to see their students in action. They also like to see their teachers and their administrators in action. So encourage your campuses to use photos that have been approved, that parents have given consent to be used, in your marketing materials, because that's going to really drive trust and visual appeal with your campus website. Then accessibility, we want to make sure that your website is ADA-compliant. We work with a lot of school districts who have gotten complaints because their website is not ADA-compliant. So there are a lot of great tools, I'm sure your platform provider has some that you can just plug in and tell you which pages are not ADA-compliant, because we want to make sure that we're accommodating to all of our users. And it's really important when we talked about interaction, and the ability for your website to connect with folks that you've got a tool in place to do that. So let me take a minute to spotlight our podcast sponsor. And that's K12 Insight. K12 Insight has some great tools. I was a user in three of my districts for many, many years. And one of my favorite tools that they released was a chatbot and the chatbot uses AI technology. And you can feed it answers to questions, questions that parents have frequently asked questions, like bus routes or menu. So if you're a K12 Insight customer and you don't have the Chatbot on your website, I highly recommend that you talk to your rep to make sure you get it implemented. If you are not a K12 Insight client, then be sure to check out all their great products at K12 insight.com/sopher to learn more about it. So if you're not using K 12 Insight, make sure you check them out, I highly recommend. Let's go back to websites. Let's talk about some ways that you can make sure that you're really migrating the right information. You know, I've been working, like I said, with my team on supporting a couple of districts who are really going through a really big migration project. When you are going through a migration project from one platform to another with your website, I tell people to think about packing up their house. When you pack up your house for a big move, you sift through the old, you purge the old, you refine what it is you want to bring in, you only pack the good stuff before you put it on a moving truck and bring it over. Same thing with the website, make sure you're doing that. If you've got a lot of old junk and trash on your website, guess what, when you migrate that information over, it's going to migrate with you. And it's going to have a fresh new look with really bad, old data and it's going to erode trust. So make sure that when you're migrating, you're taking time to do many audits, that you are working with the departments to look at their pages and make sure their information is accurate. This includes business office, Transportation Office, food service office, a lot of the operational folks the curriculum department needs to make sure they have a hand, that they are using this migration opportunity as an opportunity to clean up and make sure that they're moving over the good stuff. The more times you have eyes on it before you publish your website, the better. This is a great way to test it on all different kinds of devices are your videos really lagging are the photos coming out clear, all those kinds of things that you don't think about until a user points them out. So make sure you use some of this migration time to test on various platforms until you actually make the move over. That's actually one of my most favorite ways to make sure the website looks good is to have multiple people in multiple parts of the district utilizing it so we know what it's going to look like when it goes live. So as we wrap up this episode, I just want to remind you that your website is a digital face of your district. It's where people go 24 hours. This is where they go to look for simple information, quick facts, but also really important in-depth information that they might might want to connect with. So make sure you've got everything available to people that it's transparent, it's accessible, and that it is provided in a way that appeals to people visually. It's a key part of your communication strategy. And it's something worth investing in. So make sure you use that. So as we wrap up this episode, I just want to remind you to please share it with any of your friends who you think might benefit from some of the content that we've talked about. I look forward to connecting with you. So you can always reach me at veronicavsopher.com or you can drop me some comments, especially if you're watching on YouTube or Facebook. Make sure you hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and we look forward to the next episode. We'll see you then.