5 Things You Need to Ask Your Web Designer Before Building a Site

When you are thinking about getting your new school website designed, you may have a number of questions for your web designers. Your website is one of your most important marketing tools as well as an interactive hub for the school community, so you want to ensure you get it right.

Here are five key questions that you should ask your web designer before they start work on your website:

You don't want to launch a new website that is the same as all the other school sites - you want something that is going to stand out from the crowd.

At CSI Media, we specialise in educational websites, and our website designers have designed many sites from scratch for schools and universities. We'll be happy to show you examples of our work so you can see how they each have a unique design reflecting the values of each school.

In addition, we'll make sure your website has fast-loading pages, clear and simple navigation, and that everything works smoothly and effectively to give you the edge over other sites.

VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments) are becoming increasingly important for school websites. These are sections of the site where students, teachers and parents can share information, homework, notes and more.

A good VLE is fast, smooth and easy to use for everyone. We have a lot of experience with VLEs, and we'll make sure your website has one built in from the start.

Appearing in the search engines is something that is important for almost any website. When people research schools in the area, you want to ensure that your website appears high up in the search results to attract more traffic.

Much of SEO is carried out after the website is built, and it is an ongoing process. However, we make sure that our websites have everything you need to give you an advantage over the competition. That means clean coding, clear navigation, and the ability to add keywords and meta data to the content you publish.

This is an important consideration because you do not want to have to go running to your designer every time you want to edit some information or publish a new page.

These days, content management systems (CMSs) have made it easier than ever for website owners to make most of the changes they need without specialist skills or knowledge. Popular CMSs include Sitecore, Umbraco and WordPress, and they all have their benefits.

We use Umbraco, a highly effective CMS that gives you control over your website no matter where you are. So you can add new pages, edit existing pages, publish blogs, add images and carry out many of the most important regular tasks without any help from us.

People don't just view websites on computer screens any more: they use tablets and smartphones too. So how can you make sure your website will look great on smaller screens as well?

We use responsive design, which is a special type of website design that allows the site to adapt to the size of the screen. So no matter which device your website is being viewed on, it will always look great.

We would love to help you launch your new school website. Our designers and developers form an experienced team, and we will be happy to answer any questions you have so that you can get your website up and running in no time at all.