Evaluating School Websites

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With the emerge of Academies and a vastly increasing choice of schools for parents, never before has marketing been so important!
Now some schools tend to think of marketing as all spin and no substance, actually by developing a marketing strategy it forces you to become self aware and really examine your school’s core values.
A school that has a strong marketing and PR strategy in place experiences a range of benefits, such as an increase in pupil intake, growing support from their local community, it will assist with recruitment and will also help the school in gaining higher achievements.

With this in mind, I wanted to give you five key markers to consider that will help you to effectively market your school.

Branding
Developing a brand …show more content…

Your school website is likely to be the first place prospective parents visit to look for information and get a feel for your school. Therefore, it should have all the information a parent or student could need, laid out in a way that makes it easy to find, including all the latest technology and at the same time incorporating an up to date design.

A few key points to consider when re-designing your website: -Responsive websites are an absolute must in 2015! Reports show that mobile internet usage has now matched desktop usage therefore without a responsive school website you are instantly creating an unfriendly and negative user experience but you are also missing a massive audience. - Your Content Management System should be really simple to use so that you can efficiently update your students and parents by uploading the latest news, events, important notices etc. as they are happening.
-How does your website look? Over the past few years the design of websites has changed massively; websites these days are being designed in a much more modern way with sleek long scrolling pages, larger images and defined areas on the homepage making it very easy to navigate around especially on tablet and mobile …show more content…

Prospectus/Printed Materials Despite the increase of online technology, printed materials should continue to play a key role in promoting your school successfully!
When re-designing your school prospectus brochure you should consider the following points...
In our opinion Less is definitely more when it comes to capturing your prospective parents attention, think about reducing your text and swapping this for changeable information booklets that sit in a pocket at the back of your brochure use key quotes and big titles! Photography also plays a major part in selling your school think large glossy happy images and importantly, aim your content at your target audience ie. Parents with younger children, your new intake.

Social Media
Social media is a subject which can often cause a mixture of confusion and nervousness when it comes to using it as a tool to promote your school, and it’s easy to understand why. But, with figures showing now that over 55% of the UK population have a face book account and 15 million of us are Twitter users, it is time to really look into how your school can utilise this powerful

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