How to Choose a Web Designer for Your School

There are many factors to consider when you choose a web designer for your school site. Your school website is the first impression that many people will have of your school, so you want to make sure it is a good one.

Make sure you hire the right designer in the first place, and your chances of making a positive impression will go up considerably.

Find a designer with experience

When you look for an experienced designer, this does not just mean one with design experience. Instead, try to find a designer with specific experience in school websites.

School website designers with numerous sites already completed can give you confidence that they know what they are doing. So ask to see some previous work, and judge them based on these sites.

Ensure they can create a mobile-friendly site

Mobile-friendly sites are becoming increasingly important. Google updated its algorithm in April 2015 to give greater visibility to mobiles sites from searches made by mobile devices, and now Bing is to follow suit. You ideally want your school website to be viewable on any device, and the best way to ensure this is to get a designer with experience in responsive design.

A responsive website will change its design according to the screen size being used to view it. Compared to having two different versions – one for mobiles, one for desktops – it can be more convenient to update.

Look for a good VLE solution

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are becoming increasingly important for school sites. There are so many savings that your school can make in terms of time and money that it would be a shame to miss out on one.

However, some VLEs are slow, clunky and confusing. If you want a VLE incorporated in the website, make sure you find a designer who can provide you with a modern and user-friendly solution.

Find out about extra services

Your main aim may be to launch a new website, but it never hurts to find a designer with experience in other areas. For example, some web designers may also have experience in prospectus design, app design and even online marketing.

Find out about this because it may make more sense for you to use a designer who can provide a range of services.

Choose a suitable platform

Many web designers will use different platforms to design sites. Some specialise in WordPress sites, whereas others may use Umbraco or another platform. These are both popular content management systems that are open source (some designers may have their own custom CMS solutions).

It is always up to you, but an open-source CMS like Umbraco can have many advantages. For example, they can be:

• easy to update yourself, so there is no need to return to your designer to make changes;
• very simple to use for adding content and features;
• powerful, elegant and efficient;
• used to create limitless designs.

Also, because they are open source, if you ever want to change your designers, you are never stuck – simply find another designer with experience on the same open-source platform.

Find the right designer for your school

Make finding a suitable designer your priority when you start thinking about getting a new school website up and running. The designer will have such a large impact on the final result that it makes sense to wait until you find one who is perfect for the job rather than rushing your decision. So use these ideas to help you, and find the ideal designer.