Website Development & SEO
Our job is to make you look good, tell your story and explain why we should pay attention.
SEO is a constantly shifting recipe of art, science and voodoo. It also comes standard.
Website Development
Our solution starts with the most widely used CMS on the web: WordPress. The advantages of WordPress are endless. It is free to use. It is versatile. It provides a suite of safety features to help secure the site. It is infinitely scalable. It allows for easy duplication of website templates. It is infinitely customizable. It has usability and security tools baked into the software.
Our WordPress sites are augmented with a suite of software called DIVI. DIVI provides features that dramatically speed up page construction and enable customization. When the site is ready to launch, DIVI provides tools that simplify the editing process, using methods that are very familiar to anyone who has ever used a word processor.
New pages can be added to the website with the press of a button; a second button populates that page with a prefabricated layout; a third button allows the editor to change the content of the page directly on the page. Or users familiar with the WordPress back end can edit the site using the classic methods.
The strength of this system is its options: there are many, and they accommodate all levels of web developer experience, including those with none.
WordPress also allows application developers to create programs that solve specific needs, not addressed in the main WordPress software package. Those WordPress add-ons are called plugins. If a website has an additional software need, there is a no or low-cost plugin that can address the issue.
Best Practices Audit
We start the process of content development by auditing your current website and finding out what material already works. What content is demonstrating current best practices? Is the text copy understandable to a wide range of literacy? Is there clarity? Is there consistency of voice? Is it compelling?
Then we address more technical concerns: is the language easily translated? Is it set up for optimal SEO?
As a society, we ask a lot from our fonts, and their work is tragically under-appreciated. The scrutiny is comprehensive: are they legible? Are they conveying information about the website’s information structure? Is there sufficient contrast? Is the size appropriate? Is the usage consistent throughout the website?
Fonts do so much to help orient users within a website but receive so little credit. As we audit websites we look to see if fonts are being used to the greatest effect. We adopt the conventions that are working and replace those that are not.
The Pictures
Images are not an adornment or a luxury, they are vital parts of website navigation. Images provide website users with information about their location within a website much like the house on the corner is informing them what street they are on. Not everyone can read street signs, but we can use other visual cues to orient ourselves to locations. Good websites use the same, natural orientation skills to guide users and help them find what they need.
Photos are also the most prominent visual representation of who we are as a district, so the bar for what appears on the website should be high. Are photos well-lit? Well framed. Telling a compelling story. Showing the district in a good light. Enhancing a narrative. Are they supplementing the content and providing useful information about the context?
Most school districts do not employ professional photographers. That’s okay. Our photographers are fantastic. They know, understand, and care about this community. They want to show it in the best light, and they take pride in their work.
Website Support
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Website Design & Brand Strategy
A website is actually three websites built atop each other. You have a site for desktop computers*; a site for tablets and a site for smart phones.
Single Page Design
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Information Architecture
The first thing we do, on day one of a website project, is reach out to stakeholders and ask what thoughts they have on the idea of a new district website. It’s a conversation where we ask lots of questions.
We treasure the institutional knowledge of every person working in and around the institutions we serve. You will tell us exactly how to tailor your site perfectly.
Some may have ideas that have passed informally through the workspace. Others may have convened formal committees to look at better communications. We will support and direct these efforts into a cohesive plan for assessing the needs of all stakeholders. We will develop surveys and questionnaires to distribute over social media and email and all communications channels.
We build websites, but they are always extensions of brick-and-mortar.
We use a few different metrics to determine a website’s information structure and navigation.
One of the most obvious ways to structure a website is by its users. A top-level menu item will feature pages for parental resources. Another menu item might feature resources for district employees or potential employees. The look and feel of page layouts within those categories will look and feel a little different. Employees likely use the site frequently and know where they are headed. A parent might be using the site for the first time and need more cues to help orient themselves and find what they need.
We also use a page’s popularity as a guide for placement within a website’s navigation. Sometimes a page might logically exist deep within an information structure, like a seasonal registration or lunch menus or bus schedules or greetings in Pashto – could be added to a menu of “Quick Links” featured prominently on the front page of the website.
Basic SEO
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