"We are delighted with the website.
It has been key in helping us attract new students over other competing schools in the area."
Jean-Marc Hodgkin
Bursar, Dame Alice Harpur School
Case study
Dame Alice Harpur School, Bedford
Dame Alice Harpur School is a leading private girls school in Bedford. The school was founded in 1882 and teaches over 1000 pupils each year.
Dame Alice experiences stiff competition with other private girls schools in the Bedford area. They needed a new website that would help sell their school to prospective parents, as well as help create a sense of community for the school's existing parents and pupils.
Site map
The first thing that we agree with any school is the sitemap; how many main sections and pages do they require, and how these should be structured.
By completing our website briefing questionnaire (click here to view a PDF version) Dame Alice specified the 6 main areas of the website as "Home", "About Us", "School Life", "Admissions", "News" and "Community" as well as the pages that sit beneath. By providing us with this information we were able to advise them on the best way to structure the navigation for their website.
Although we set up all these pages for Dame Alice to get them started they can easily add other pages to their website as and when they need to.
Within any Websites for Schools Administration website (the "content management system" that allows the school to control the content of their website) the site map is displayed clearly on the left hand side. An example is shown on the screenshot to the right. This can be visible at all times and gives a nice clear overview as to the structure of the website. It also acts as a quick website navigation tool.
Design
The web designer assigned to the project worked closely with Dame Alice to ensure that the look and feel was professional, clean and informative. It was carefully crafted to dovetail with their existing offline literature. We have found that secondary schools often prefer a "corporate" look and feel for their websites, whereas primary schools prefer their websites to be more colourful, vibrant, and "child-friendly".
Once Dame Alice were happy with the design the web designer transformed it into a living breathing website, and linked it up with the Administration website. As can be seen on the screenshot below, the Administration website looks similar in appearance to the website visible to the public but allows Dame Alice's teachers and pupils to edit the content.
Special features
We offer a number of "special features" that schools can use to make their website more engaging. These include;
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Workflow tools so you can, for example, provide pupils with different administration rights to teachers
Interactive school map (see Maps for schools)
Rotating photographic banners
News and events lists
Other than the Interactive school map, each of these special features are controlled through the Administration website. Dame Alice chose to integrate all of these into their website. Though we do not cover each in detail within this case study, the screenshot below shows how news articles can be added to the News and events list.
Go live
Once Dame Alice were happy we took the website live so it could be viewed as a website on the Internet. We issued the school with user guides to help them understand how to use the Administration website and stayed close at hand to help them with any teething problems.
The Dame Alice website has now been live for over a year has delivered a real online sense of community for the school. The site has also met its key objective of helping to boost new pupil registrations. Furthermore, the website has become an invaluable ITC resource helping to provide website management experience for pupils and teachers alike.
To view the live website please visit www.dahs.co.uk.
Links to further information
View our frequently asked questions for in depth information about our services
See an overview of our school website product
Contact us if you have a question or would like to discuss your school's website