For schools
Most school websites are written for governors. Parents decide in seconds.
School websites often make sense to the people who work in the school. Parents experience them differently.
School websites built from the parent's side of the desk. Audit first. Rebuild if it needs one.
You know where everything is. A prospective parent doesn't.
A parent comparing three schools looks at all three on a phone, usually late in the evening. They are not reading. They are scanning for whether this school is for a family like theirs.
Most school sites answer the questions the school finds comfortable. Ethos, history, facilities. Not necessarily the questions parents actually ask, which may be fees, results, pastoral care and how soon they can visit.
Nobody inside the school can see this any more because everybody inside the school already knows where everything is.
A parent choosing a school is not assessing an institution. They are trying to picture their own child inside it on an average day.
The main service
The Admissions Website Audit.
Five working days. I'll look at your website as if I were a parent considering your school and show you where it helps and where it gets in the way.
How I do it
I don't start by looking at your website. I start by pretending I don't know your school. Then I try to do the things a prospective parent would actually do.
- Search for the school on my phone.
- Follow the result a prospective parent would follow.
- Look at the homepage.
- Try to find something specific, such as exam results.
- Look at a co curricular page.
- Compare the whole experience with competing schools.
The first pass takes about four minutes. Then I go back and look properly.
What I'll show you
- Where I'm likely to get confused.
- What I'm looking for but can't find.
- What makes the school feel distinctive.
- What gets in the way of an enquiry.
- What I'd fix first.
- What you can fix without spending anything.
What you get
- A recorded walkthrough of the website, talking through what I notice as I use it.
- A written list of fixes in priority order.
- The changes that cost nothing clearly identified.
- A comparison against three schools you compete with locally.
- Delivered in five working days.
- Price
- USD 1,000GBP 750 or AED 3,675
- Payment
- Half up frontthen half on delivery
- Timing
- Five working days
A school may not need a complete rebuild. The audit identifies what is actually wrong and what can be fixed without spending anything. It is a useful piece of work in its own right, not a sales exercise for a rebuild.
The comparison
Here's what happens when someone compares you with the three schools you're actually competing with.
The question is not simply whether the website looks good on its own. It is what happens when a parent compares it with another school. So the audit looks at your website beside three schools you compete with locally, the way a parent would.
I do not assume I already know why a competitor's website works better. The first time I compared schools this way I expected warmer writing to be the difference. When I looked properly, it wasn't. The audit is based on what I find, not on what I expect to find.
What the audit is looking for.
The audit looks at the website from the parent's point of view. These are the questions I ask, in this order.
Two things come up often. The academic half exists and is buried. The holistic half exists and is invisible. And describing what a school offers is not the same as letting a parent picture what their child's day would actually be like.
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Can I work out what kind of family this school is for?
Not simply what the school says about itself. Can a prospective parent understand whether this feels like the right school for their family?
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Can I find the things I need before I make contact?
Most parents want to check the practical things before they pick up the phone.
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Can I find fees without hunting?
Parents should not have to understand the school's internal structure before finding practical information.
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Can I understand what actually happens to a child here?
Not just what the school says it values. Can a parent picture the experience?
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Can I picture my child here?
Showing children is different from describing activities. A parent is trying to see their own child in an average day.
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Can I find out what parents are likely to worry about?
The website needs to answer the questions parents actually have.
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Can I arrange a visit without having to understand the school's internal structure first?
The next step should be clear.
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What happens when I compare this school with another school competing for the same families?
The website needs to work in the context of the schools competing for the same families.
Sometimes the website doesn't need rebuilding. And sometimes it does.
The audit may identify simple changes the school can make itself. When the structure itself is getting in the way, I can rebuild the website.
- Bespoke and built individually.
- Fast to load.
- Easy for staff to update.
- Designed around the enquiry rather than the brochure.
Available after the audit or on its own. Price on enquiry.
Two ways I work with schools
Rebuild the whole website or give one programme room to breathe.
Need a completely new school website? I can build that. Already have a website, but have a programme that deserves more attention than a page in the menu? A specialist microsite may be the better answer.
Why me
I have sat in the conversations about what makes a school attractive to families.
Twenty three years teaching in international schools.
I’m not a web designer who happens to have worked in schools. I’m someone from inside education who learned to design and build websites.
I understand what schools want to communicate and, more importantly, what parents actually need to see.
I understand
- How schools talk about themselves.
- How parents talk about schools.
- What schools think matters.
- What parents actually ask.
- How internal school structures make websites confusing.
- What admissions teams need.
- How schools make decisions.
- Why schools struggle to edit their own websites.
Amy Garside Media is one person. I have spent twenty three years working inside schools and I build the websites myself.
Evidence
What changed when we looked at a school website through a parent's eyes.
No logos and no statistics. Every case study here follows the same six steps: what the website looked like before, what a prospective parent had to do, where the friction was, what changed, why it changed and what the new experience is like. What you see is the reasoning rather than a pair of screenshots.
Extract from an audit
A note before we start: I've anonymised the school in this example. It's a real school and this is a real website, but the name isn't important here. What matters is what a prospective parent sees when they arrive.
What a parent hits in the first twenty seconds
The school is found easily and trusted once found. It is first in search for its own name and its reviews are recent and warm. The problem is not visibility or speed. It is what happens after a parent arrives.
- The first screen says nothing. The message sits inside a video that does not play on an iPhone, so many parents never see it.
- The fees page contains no fees. Google shows parents searching for them by name.
- Book a Tour does not book a tour. It opens a general contact form with no phone number, no child's age and no preferred day.
- An event page from last winter is still live with a working register button.
- The age range appears four different ways in four places. Two different phone numbers are in circulation.
- Nothing is being measured, so nobody can say how many parents reach the enquiry form and leave.
- An empty shopping cart sits in the header of every page.
What is working and should not be touched
- Its search position, which a careless rebuild would throw away.
- The parent reviews on the home page.
- Short, honest answers in the FAQ.
- Staff bios that are specific and human.
What could be fixed this week for nothing
- Take down the old event page.
- Put one sentence on the first screen that says what the school is, where it is and who it is for.
- Settle on one age range and one phone number everywhere.
- Add a phone number field and the child's age to the enquiry form.
Two kinds of evidence belong here. The extract above and the writing below show how I think. Case studies, added as schools give permission to share them, will show what I can do.
What a parent sees in the first twenty secondsWriting
What parents see.
Short pieces on school websites, written from the parent's point of view.
Want to know what your website looks like from the other side?
Start with the audit.
If you would rather just ask a question first, email me.