One of Brisbane’s most sought-after private co-educational schools, Cannon Hill Anglican College, (or CHAC as it is affectionately known) recently launched a new website that was briefed – and went live – in 4 months.
When it comes to launching a new website quickly, a number of elements have to come together. CHAC’s website was conceived, designed, project-managed and built in a tight timeframe. The resulting website is testament to a good brief, good client project management and a successful client-agency partnership.
CHAC Director of Marketing and Development, Steve Forster, and his Project Manager, Katrina Upton, said the result is a clean, simple to navigate, impactful website that continues to raise CHAC’s profile in the Brisbane private school market place.
Working to a tight timeframe and a realistic budget, CHAC commenced the project with a brief on what they wanted, an outline of other websites they liked and a sitemap to get the foundations of the website right before any design work commenced.
This was followed by a workshop with the marketing and enrolments team to understand key messages and what they saw as the purpose of the website. In this case it was to be predominantly an outward-facing site with parent, staff and student information to be moved to a private CHAC portal.
A tour of the school also helped Look Education understand the positioning of the College, its unique offering and differentiation in the market place. Here at Look, we consider this essential in helping us understand the best way to develop the home page – the most important part of the website real estate.
Prior to conceiving the site design, we identify SEO keywords that the website needs to rank on and, if possible, understand what are the most visited pages on the current site using Google Analytics. This is essential for adding SEO meta data to the website in the build stage, which will help help the website rank on Google.
Launching a School Website Quickly Part 2
Our next stage in web development, and equally as important, is the home page wireframe and home page copy. We write copy for SEO and ensure our home page wireframe and copy captures:
- the positioning of the school
- the essential key messages/differentiation and
- calls to action for the user so we can get traction on the website key pages.
Once the client is happy with the wireframe and home page copy and we are all in agreement, we proceed to design.
We created a design of the Home page and content page and presented these as PDFs. They were approved with minimal changes (due to a good brief and process) and then proceeded to build stage in a relatively short timeframe.
While the design stage was happening, content was being created by both the client and our copywriter. They pulled everything together including new writing and editing where required.
The final content was uploaded with the client able to view and sign-off each page in live preview mode. We then did a final test of all forms, and viewing on mobile devices, laptops and large monitors before going live.
This tried and tested process ensures that our designs are more than just ‘design’. As senior creatives and strategists, our value-add is presenting our clients with concepts that reflect our total service. This is reflected through design, images, copy and tone – a total offer that ultimately gives our school clients impact and confidence in what they are paying for.
We design based on our process – site map, wireframe, SEO, copy and image selection (and brand parameters) – so that what you get is fit for purpose. We prefer to design with approved copy as it makes the user experience more real and it also demonstrates the call to actions across the home page. The content proposed on the home page is critical to the design, as it saves our client money due to there being fewer design changes and less back and forth and time delays.
If you have a requirement for launching a school website quickly get in touch today.
