Surbiton Web Design.co.uk

School Website Design

Surbiton web design can ensure that your website reflects your own school's unique ethosand community
through its design and content or by teaching pupils and staff web design techniques so they have ownership of the site.

At Surbiton web design we have a thorough understanding of how school's work and how each school values their own unique identity along with acknowledging the tight financial and time budgets all schools work within.

Consequentially,firstly as a prerequisite to any project,clearly defined project goals are established. and a budget!

Do you want to us to design and maintain the site or do you want us to teach you how to? or a combination of the two,through ideally,
an initial face to face meeting in which we will work with those members of the school community involved in the project to establish a clear brief for the project, which will involve establishing the following;

Project objectives

• What do you want to achieve by having a school web site or updating it ?
• A web site is a window into your school or college. An opportunity to celebrate you school's success and pupils' achievements. Do you want a merit page?
• It can be a living brochure, a display board, a newsletter, a messaging service, an events diary and a means of building learning communities.
• Creating a web site on the Internet allows everyone with Internet access to visit and communicate with you from any where in the world at any time!
• It's a permanent fluid open day.
• Parents and prospective students can view children's work, read your newsletter, find out the date and time of events, send e-mail to teachers and lecturers, check homework schedules and become a greater part of the school or college community.
• Colleges and schools can form links with others around the world, and project their strengths and ethos to all who visit the site.
• When learners are involved in web publishing they not only learn to work creatively with text, graphics and sound, but they also develop their ICT skills in a meaningful, collaborative context.
• It enables learners to demonstrate understanding of a topic by presenting it in an attractive and persuasive way which will hold people's attention.
• Many school and college web sites begin as an activity for learners, but they can soon become a valuable interactive library of learning resources.
• Creating high-quality materials which can be seen by teachers, parents, other pupils and people all over the world develops self-esteem.
• The nature of web publishing - combining different elements and working together - means that pupils who may find it difficult to work from a blank page have a basis on which to develop their own ideas and creativity. With some basic understanding of how web pages work, basic design skills and access to a server on which to publish, staff and pupils can create a web site with text, pictures, graphics, sound and video clips. With the aid of a digital camera, photographs can bring a web page to life and capture the attention of visitors to a site but it is necessary to consider the download time of image safety of pupils and staff.
• Do you know the latest guidelines for Internet use superhighwaysafety and data protection. With authoring software like Macromedia Dreamweaver web publishing is becoming as straightforward as word processing and within the capabilities of very young learners. As the National Grid for Learning develops, school and college web sites will be increasingly used by parents, pupils, students, officials and visitors to find out about the life of the school.
• A very important issue for schools is who will be in charge of the project to ensure the site is regularly updated and checked as this can be very time consuming. Surbiton web design can do this for you.
• Finally, do you have an existing site (including a domain name ) that needs to be updated and have you been allocated space on your local grid for learning,if so how large is it and what type of server is it as this dictates whether dynamic content can be added.

Who will be your audience?

• Your target audience is likely to include current students, prospective students, parents selecting a school or college, teachers considering applying for a post at your establishment and members of the local community, to name but a few.
• Ask yourself who will visit your school or college web site and how often.
• Ask how, you are going to cater for such varied visitors. For instance :
• What size is their monitor and what resolution their screen is set to will effect the working space of a page.
• Which browser are they using and which version as they support different functions. Do you want to make the site accessible to all? One in five people have special needs of one sort or another.
• Do your readers want to download and install plugins to view flash pages etc. if it was not preinstalled on their computer ? Will they feel comfortable and be willing to do so?

It could include information

• Consider why visitors might want to spend their time at your site. It has been said that you have eight seconds to persuade people to stay on your web site once they reach it.Will pupils be involve in publishing and as editors?If so Dreamweaver is a very useful straight forward web publishing tool which can be used to create and update individual pages or entire websites. It is available as an educational package which includes flash( webmovie maker- a suggested way of extending the most able of pupils,Fireworks ( a photo editor)
• Think from their point of view, not yours - what might they want to find out?
• What information and resources will they find useful? By putting important information on the home page you engage and hold people's attention and interested you want popup windows on the opening page to alert the audience to latest updates or changes to Sport's day!
• How will you keep it up to date and fresh - make your visitors want to stay there and keep coming back; provide topical items and either delete or archive out-of-date material. A newspaper-style home page often works well if it is busy, changing and full of headline information.
• How will you exploit the medium and be creative: what can you provide for people that would not have been possible before? Be aware that your prospectus that looks impressive on paper may need to be redesigned to work on the Web.
• How will you make communication a two-way process: some school and college sites offer discussion areas and an e-mail newsletter service for visitors,but you should ensure that visitors can send feedback or simply get in touch with your school or college.
• How will you show an appreciation for the needs of the user, including the need to keep down their telephone bill.
• How will you ensure that the language used is appropriate to the target audience.
• Try to avoid using jargon and acronyms where possible - your readers may be anywhere in the world and parents not teachers!

Strategy

Surbiton web design will propose a strategy for achieving project objectives encompassing all your needs Whether your want to us to design the site or guide you in using Dreamweaver.The key things to remember are to keep it simple at first, clear and consistent then with time develop the users experience

Functionality and navigation are key issues to consider when developing a web site.

• 'Functionality' means how well the site works.
• 'Navigation' is how users find their way around the site and find information on it.

Questions to ask and strategies to considerif you decide to make a site are:

• Is navigation logical and easy?Is it accessible-For instance could you navigate through the site if you had poor eyesight or were blind?
• Are there alternative routes through the site?
• Is the structure of the web site obvious to the user?
• Before send the plan to us make a plan of your site.
• Keep navigation consistent. For example, use the same logo / text in the same position throughout the site.
• Include a link on every page to your home page.
• Use a site map and/or an a-z index of the site contents to help people find what they are looking for.
• On a small site, keep the information within three clicks of your home page, or alternatively, use your site plan as the home page.

It is normal practice to keep the main headings always visible, either to the left, top or bottom of the screen.

Consider how information will be organised and grouped so that users find it where they would expect to.

Do all elements perform as expected - for example, textual, visual and audio, interactive features, links, and pages that users might wish to print?( will these page backgrounds be white?)

Do pages and graphics load quickly and view correctly in Internet Explorer and Firefox?

If additional plugins and software are needed (for example audio players), provide links to sites where they can be downloaded.

Who will check regularly that all links work and that feedback facilities such as e-mail links and feedback forms work and are answered promptly?

By choosing Surbiton web design to create and maintain your school's website, you are guaranteed a friendly, jargon free, personalised service which matches all your needs and budget.

What can we do for you?

• We can design and give you valuable advice on the content of your web pages.
• We will put them on the web space for you.
• We will be able to give you a website address personal to you, for instance StGeorges.co.uk,if it is still available.
• Surbiton web design will log your website effectively with all the major search engines, (so people can actually find you Around 80% of Internet users look for what they want by first visiting one of the top 8 search engines. Alta Vista alone handles over 38 million searches a month. Good positions on just one or two of the busiest engines can dramatically increase traffic to a site. Statistics show that people hardly ever go past the top 30 search results and if your site appears in the top 10, you'll get 85% more traffic than if it appears between 11 and 30. Achieving high search engine positions is not just a case of registering with search engines, but it requires optimizing your site code based on market research and an in depth knowledge of search engines and directories.) The service we offer is tailor made for schools, since we understand what a school needs.
• Working with you we can promote your school effectively ,with your website you will also have the facility to issue e-mail addresses with your website address on the end and have them forwarded to your usual e-mail address. For instance, mine is arthur@surbitonwebdesign.co.uk and is forwarded to my usual e-mail address. You can have (Yourname)@school.co.uk.
• We can made guestbooks,virtual tours and slideshows if you current ISP allows them or advise on a host that will meet your requirements.
• From the information given Surbiton web design will make a mock up first page. If you like what you see you will be given a quotation for the creation of the rest of the site and an approximate timescale. If you agree you will be issued with an invoice and on payment of that invoice work will commence. You will be given a completion date pay half at the start and, when the work is complete and you are happy with your site, you pay the rest and we will release the site to you, or put it on the web space for you.
• From the date of publishing your website you receive 3 months free online support to iron out any teething troubles. During that period we keep a copy of your website on our server in case of any mishaps after which it is deleted. If you're not confident about maintaining your own website then we offer this service too. We will can host your website and maintain it for you at a small extra charge.