The Glennie School

Glennie Gets a Boost From Their New School Website: Case Study

The Glennie School’s new school website has become a vital marketing and community building tool.

A website with a ‘wow’ factor

Tammy Wilson, The Glennie School’s Marketing and Community Engagement Manager, had a big job. She’d inherited a slow, dated, website that had become a store room for too many pieces of communication targeted at too many people.

The site needed a refresh so it could take its place as a key part of the school’s communication toolkit.

‘Industry research tells us that parents check out school websites. They thoroughly research schools online before they pick up the phone and come and meet you in person,’ Tammy said. ‘So we had to give people enough information, and enough of a wow factor, to call us and come on a personal tour.’

Other must haves were big, bright images and the capacity to host videos to showcase the girls, and the school’s offerings. The school website also had to be easy to use and to update.

Indigo Web’s team smooths the way

The Glennie School chose Indigo Web for their excellent design skills, value-for-money price point and reliable customer service. Indigo also build websites on Umbraco, and that was a big plus. ‘I’ve used Umbraco before,’ Tammy said. ‘It’s such an easy system and I can make tweaks myself, quickly. For example, if I need a landing page for a new campaign, I can just go in and do it.’

The school uses customisable forms, booking buttons and other methods to capture data. Umbraco makes this ‘useful, quick and handy.’

Tammy is an experienced marketer and she knew what The Glennie School needed from their site.

‘Danny and Tristan looked at what I needed to achieve and negotiated from a technical perspective.‘

‘It was a lovely, whole team approach of guiding and managing to a final outcome, one that we were all happy with.’

The support didn’t finish there. The Indigo Web team has trained Tammy’s marketing team so that everyone can use the system. They continue to help out, whenever the school needs a new function or something extra.

‘The ongoing support we’ve received from them has been absolutely faultless.’

What do the users think of the end result?

The new school website is seeing excellent engagement: traffic has increased, page views are up and viewers spend longer on the site. Tammy is getting lots of feedback, from prospective families to the existing school community.

As the person in charge of the project, she’s happy.

‘I feel really proud when I look at our website, it really showcases Glennie and everything the school offers. It creates an emotional reaction in me, and I’ve heard that it does the same for our potential families as well.’

Help was at hand after the launch

Indigo Web tests, checks and double-checks before any website goes live. But, with projects this size, an occasional problem can pop up once it’s in use.

That’s why it is important to have reliable support. In this case, the homepage needed some fixing up. The launch version of the homepage had two navigation layers, one displaying beautiful photos. Once the site was launched, behind the scenes checks showed that people weren’t using this navigation and were missing out on the images.

But everything worked out.

‘Indigo Web and the designers quickly came up with a new page that actually works much better.’

Tammy’s advice to anyone needing a school website:

• Sit down with the Indigo team and figure out what you need and what you don’t. And if you’re not too sure, don’t worry. The team will help you out.
• It doesn’t matter if you’re tech savvy, or if you have no idea about technology. The team will work through it with you, without the jargon.
• If you have a solid system like Umbraco in place, you can continue to add functions. If you’re a school, that might be an e-newsletter to keep families up to date, or videos created by students on their phones, or a new form for an upcoming event.

Does your school’s website need a makeover?​

Give us a call on 07 4638 7552. Or get in touch.

This site features:

• Umbraco for the super-flexible content management system.
• Umbraco grid editor, featuring fully modular layout allowing serious customisation of each page.
• Custom web design by DMS Creative.
• Mobile responsive layout.
• Instant search for ease of finding important content.
• Umbraco Forms integration.