School website design for busy parents
I design school websites for parents who check on a phone between other jobs. Admissions are easy to find for new families, notices are one tap away for current ones, and the office can keep it all up to date without calling a developer for every change.
What the home page shows
Two kinds of parent, one page.
Who you are
The school's name, board, classes and town, with one real photo of the school.
Admissions, when they're open
A clear banner with dates and a link to the process, which steps aside when admissions close.
Latest notices
The three most recent notices with dates, and a link to the rest.
Quick links
Calendar, fee structure, transport, results, uniform and the parent portal if you have one.
Contact
Office hours, phone, WhatsApp, email and a map link to the gate parents should use.
Built so staff can keep it current
Notices in a minute
A simple form for title, date, category and an attached PDF, with no design decisions to make.
Separate logins
Office staff, the principal and class coordinators can each have their own login and permissions.
One calendar
Holidays and exams entered once and shown on the calendar page and the home page.
Documents that open
Circulars as text where possible, PDFs kept small, so they open on a basic phone.
Readable for every family
A school website is used by parents of every age and every level of comfort with technology, and some of them have poor eyesight or use a screen reader. I design with large enough text, strong contrast, buttons a thumb can hit and pages that work with a keyboard. My page on website accessibility explains what that involves.
The site also has to load on cheaper phones and slow connections. That rules out heavy sliders and huge photo galleries on the home page, and favours quick, light pages. The structure is planned for school SEO from the start, so the admissions and class pages can be found by families searching nearby.
More for schools
Questions about school website design
Can the site be in English and another language?
Yes. Many parents read more comfortably in a local language, so key pages such as admissions and notices can have a second version. Each version gets its own address so parents and Google both find the right one.
How do parents find old circulars?
Notices are listed newest first, with a date and a category such as exams, holidays or fees, and older ones stay in an archive by month. Parents can scroll or search instead of asking the office for a copy.
Can admission forms be filled in online?
Yes. A form can collect the details and documents you need and send them securely to the admissions office. If you already use an admissions system, the website links to it instead.
Want a school site that saves your office time?
Tell me what parents call about most and what you post each week. I'll show you how the site would handle it and give you the price.