Not many primary and secondary schools in Nigeria are serious about having a website. In fact, many people view school websites in Nigeria as reserved for the elite group of schools.
For the few that have websites, most have turned it into a billboard of sorts. Boring announcements about fee hikes, administrative projects, matriculation, admissions, and of course, results! Then add the annoying problems of poor designs, poor mobile experience, and low-quality photos and the school website is a total sham!
Now, it is not bad to have this information on the school website. However, the school website is not a dumpsite for all manner of information! It is supposed to be an active, interesting, living online platform for the school.
As a matter of fact, if done right, the school website can become the most valuable online asset of a school!
Very few school websites share valuable resources and helpful information with students and even the general public.
For those that would really love to keep valuable content on their website, they encounter several problems ranging from poorly trained personnel to ICT departments that are really outdated, and then a lack of school website ideas.
So, having a website for your school is a good move, but having the right content for your website is what will drive traffic to your site and make you visible to your prospective clients.
Creating content for your site can be an issue, especially when it seems you have exhausted all your content ideas. We would love to give you a few high-quality content ideas and how you can consistently create and develop them to meet the need of your audience.
15 School Website Content Ideas and How You Can Develop Them
To get you started on a general note, we have put together 15 school website ideas. These ideas can be developed and put on separate pages, or on different sections of a page. They include:
- Homepage Content
- About Us
- Gallery
- Admissions
- School Facilities
- News and Trends
- Blog content
- Reviews
- Research
- Frequently Asked Questions
- School Curriculum
- Contact details
- Achievements
- Parent-Teachers Forum
- Careers
Let us now explore each in detail.
1. Homepage content: Non-negotiable website content
This is the section most people are familiar with. This section has the basic information about the school. The Homepage introduces the reader to the school. It would usually contain the name of the school, the location, and the Unique Selling Point (USP) of the school. This section is the landing page for the school and excellent copywriting and SEO skills would be needed.
When writing Homepages, we always say a first-time visitor to your website should be able to know the most important details about what you do as a school from the Homepage. It should be clear, concise, and well-optimized.
2. About Us: Important content about your school
This section gives enough information about your school, such as when it was founded, Mission, and Vision statements. It might also contain the values, of the founders, the names of the founders, and the teaching and administrative staff.
Information contained on a school website should be functional. That is, there must always be a reason for whatever is put on the website. This is where many founders get it wrong, as many of them want to put all the information they feel is important on their About Us page.
Newsflash: Most people would never read it!
You do not have to put every single detail about the school on this page. The most important details should give the reader just enough to consider your school. Overloading the website with unnecessary information would put your potential clients off.
So, stick to what is important and write content purposefully!
3. Gallery
The Gallery is a page or section where photos are allowed to do the speaking. Here, pictures of significant milestones, programs can be displayed. The pictures should be high-quality and professional photos.
Avoid low-quality images, as they would not paint your school in a good light. Always ensure that the best images of the students, teachers, and school environment are used. It is not a bad idea to hire a professional photographer to get good shots of the school buildings, or to cover events like the launching of a building, library, ICT centre, etc.
4. Admissions
A great school website would have information on admission processes in the school. This would include the date for the commencement of admission processes and the process for submitting applications in simple steps. It should contain the resumption dates, how long the session would last, holidays and any other related information to admissions in your school.
We believe that an admissions page should be so informative that a client really has little or no need to visit for more information.
Unfortunately, several school owners stop here and leave their websites inactive, dull, and boring. But there are really many more school website ideas you can use to spice things up. Keep reading for more!
5. School Facilities
You can dedicate a special page to showcase the facilities in your school. Do you have a fantastic library? Good, create some content about the vision that led to setting it up. You have an ultra-modern sports complex? Fantastic! Discuss how you value physical fitness and sports in your school and how it can boost the academic performance of your students.
Maybe you have excellent boarding facilities? That’s great! Boast about the facilities and how the living conditions are just right for superior academic performance.
Of course, the classrooms? ICT Centres? You can discuss all this under your school facilities section of the school website.
Clients want to see your best, so give them your best!
6. News: The Periodic School Website Content Idea
People always want to know what is going on. And that is a fact that you can leverage on to draw interaction and increase engagement on your school website. You can have a News and Trends section that would update your students, their parents, your staff, and your school community about recent happenings.
These recent happenings do not have to be limited to what goes on in the school. It can be up to date with recent happenings and social media trends, topics that are educative but at the same time would draw interaction from students in the school.
If it is a primary school, then the content should be more directed to parents, discussing issues that are relevant to parenting and child care, education for children, and related topics.
If it is a secondary school, then you can have different sections for the parents, the teachers, and the students. Your school’s website should be a reliable source of information, so you should update your site with news content as frequently as possible.
You can update your news article based on:
● School events: give updates on events happening in the school; upcoming or just concluded events like the founders’ day celebration, school club activities, etc.
● Local, national, and international news: it is essential to focus on things happening in your school. But also, write about the national and international education sectors and how it impacts your students and affects your audience.
● Fixed content: this fills up your content calendar with some recurring content and helps you not run out of content. Examples of fixed contents are:
Staff/student of the week- you get to interview someone from your school and upload the interview on your website. It could be a student or a teacher.
Awards: let your audience see and appreciate your hard-working staff and students. You can make it an open selection, or even allow both students and staff to look forward to who the next person would be.
● Sporting events: you would agree with us that one of the events everyone looks forward to is the sporting events or inter-house sports competition. News on upcoming sporting events, athletes to look out for, and so on appears to be premium content that will interest your audience and keep them engaged.
News updates are a huge plus for your website. It keeps your audience updated about things going on in and around your school. To create this content in an entertaining and informative way, make sure you have the best team working on it.
7. Blog Content: The Ultimate School Website Content Idea
Blogs are the most common and cost-effective way of getting people to your website. It was initially used mainly by individuals who just wanted to tell their life stories, and companies that sell products. Now, whether products or services, business owners benefit from blogging.
You can use blogging to keep both students and parents engaged and promote discussion among students. Getting your students to be skilled beyond the four walls of the classroom is a vital aspect of education. Blogging encourages and motivates students to become better readers and writers. It also encourages the use of the Internet among students and even teachers.
Asides from the benefits of blogging to teachers and students, uploading relevant content gives your school a chance to expand its reach and build trust and confidence around your school.
How do you know what to blog? No worries, that’s the essence of this article. First, listen to your audience. You don’t want to post content your audience is not interested in. Your audience is all around you; listen to them and make sure to address their needs.
Take, for example, parents generally have questions like “What’s the advantage of boarding school over day school?” or “Is boarding school worth the investment?”
As important as addressing their needs and fears is, be careful not to major on why your school is the best choice; address all questions from a general perspective.
While choosing a title for your blog, keep in mind that web searches come mostly in questions, so you can make your topic a direct question. If you are concerned about your website’s search engine optimization, talk to us! We would love to help you achieve your goals.
8. Reviews: The Magnetic School Website Content Idea
The best form of advertisement for your school is “REVIEWS” honest and authentic reviews or testimonials from both past and present parents and students. Humans generally are very interested in what other people have to say about practically everything, including schools. Do you have amazing services to offer? Brag about them, after all, if you don’t, who will?
You can gather reviews through various means. The world has gone digital, and that’s quite advantageous in this situation as well. You could create an online form (there are a lot of them) where people can click and write their reviews. You could also create a medium to get short videos from students and parents, both past and present. Collate these reviews and place them on your website
Quick one: Ensure you update your reviews at least once a year. You will always have new people visiting your websites, and you don’t want them to only find reviews from 2019 in the year 2023, right?
9. Research: The unraveling school website Idea
Have you ever tried writing on a topic and felt like you needed stats and figures to back a claim? Figures help to validate claims, and research is the way to get figures and statistics.
You can carry out research among your students, teachers, or parents, and then come up with figures that can represent the majority of the population.
You can create stats that would be useful for not only your school, but other schools who might have been asking the same questions.
Once you’re able to achieve this, your website would definitely become a problem-solving destination. You would get several backlinks from people who find your research useful and improve your credibility and awareness.
Carrying our research establishes you as an authority in the field and sets you up for several other benefits such as consultation services, speaking engagements, and hosting significant events.
To get questions that you would want to research, you can check your records on the most common emails, complaints, or questions that you have, from parents, students, or teachers. You can also check online comment sections, parent forums, or social media pages, and you would most likely find out what people are asking that is relevant to your school.
Examples of topics include what factors affect bullying in secondary schools, factors that affect the performance of students, the impact of play on pupils’ performance. Do primary school pupils with private tutors do better than those without them?
Once you find this, the next step is to put a plan together on how you would love to perform the research the subjects involved, the method of gathering data, and your analysis.
The next step is to get to work and gather your data. Ensure your process is as unbiased as possible. Once you have it all, collate it, clean it, and analyse it.
You can dedicate a section on your website to publish findings from your research and this would definitely establish you as a thought leader!
Knowing and understanding your school’s values is the simplest way to know the kind of content to put out to your audience. This would be different for each school, but we have come up with some of the school website content your audience would be interested in.
10. Frequently Asked Questions:
Are there questions that parents, students, and guardians commonly ask? Well, create an FAQ section to answer all of them.
What we are trying to do here is to ensure that your website is useful to anyone that visits. So, an FAQ page would help to reduce the number of direct complaints and inquiries since most of them would have been answered.
11. School Curriculum
You can have a page or pages dedicated to the curriculum for each class based on their subjects. This is a very easy way to show structure and organization within your school. Outline what each child is expected to learn at each level. Some of your clients would appreciate the extra details you provide as it can help them decide if your school is a good fit for their wards or not.
12. Contact Us section:
What is a website without a contact us page? A contact us page is basic for any form of business. This page should have a form that people can fill for their questions and inquiries. It is a must-have! And several other pages, such as the homepage, about us, and even the blogs can link directly to the contact us page to get more information. It is very important for conversions and establishing relationships with your clients.
13. Achievements page:
Display and discuss your awards and achievements. As we said earlier, parents, and students want to see the best, so give it to them!
Best WAEC results in your state? Write it!
Produced the Best candidate for the JAMB examinations? Put it there! This page is for the awards and achievements that have brought accolades to the school. After all, who does not love success?
14. Parent-Teachers Forum:
Many school owners do not like the Parent-Teachers forum. Yes, it is true some parents can be overbearing. But hey, they send their children to your school. So you should expect some of that. Having a forum online can allow for great suggestions, discussions, and ideas that can move the school forward. It can also allow you to meet with them online, instead of having physical meetings always. You can always get immediate feedback about your school policies online.
In this day and age when parents find it difficult to come to see their kids’ schools, it can be a good alternative for some parents who can always discuss online.
15. Careers Page:
Have a careers section on your school website for job vacancies. Do you need teachers or admin staff? Put it there and let people apply from there. The time of carrying paper and files is past and it just makes your life easier when you can receive applications online. S,o, put your job adverts on your school website!
6 Things to Avoid on the School Website
Even if you have the best school facilities on ground, many people would check your school website online before paying you a visit.
So, to create a good first impression, avoid the following like a plague!
#1. Poor Website Designs
Your website is not a dumpsite, so, make sure it does not look like one! Get great website designers to create something decent for you. If you want a platform that you can easily use, WordPress is very functional and easy to use. If you can afford developers, that is also fine. Do not employ people who would do a shabby job. Your online presence is as important as what is on ground!
#2. Lumping Content Together
No matter how much you have to say, please do not lump heavy blocks of text together. Be simple, direct and include only relevant, concise information.
#3. Poor Website Navigation
A website designer should know this. But as a school owner or manager, you should also know what to expect. Navigating from the homepage to other pages and returning should be seamless on your website unless readers would leave!
#4. Avoid revealing unnecessary Information
Safety is very important. Only necessary data should be put on the website. Avoid putting the names, birthdays, and addresses of your students or parents and teachers on your website Only the school address should be used. There should also be an online admin or regulator to prevent bullying, inappropriate behavior, or bad reports.
#5. Search Bar Function
This should be on every website so that people can find what they need in time
#6. Poorly Written content
A very close relative of a poorly designed website is poorly written content. How can a school website have serious grammatical errors? What are they going to teach the kids if they cannot write in good English?
Come on now!
That is a No, No! It should be unheard of on a school website!
Conclusion
Your website can be a good tool for your school if you maximize its use. Releasing valuable content to your audience is not so easy. But it is an effective way of reaching them and getting them to request your service. Also, remember that search engine optimization for your content is as important as the content itself. Your audience may not see your blogs if your content is not search engine optimized.
Now that you know how important content creation is to your website and have an idea of school website content you can upload, your next line of action is to get to work!
If you also need school website content, then you can reach out to us now!
