Want to create a school website that stands out? Here’s what you need to know:
A school website does a lot of heavy lifting. It is often the first thing a prospective parent looks at, the place existing parents turn to for updates and the public face of everything your school stands for. Getting it right matters more than most schools realise.
Whether you are reviewing what you already have or planning something new, these are the seven elements that every school website needs to get right.
Key Elements at a Glance:
- Easy-to-Use Navigation: Simple menus, mobile-first design and clear labels for every type of visitor.
- Accessibility Features: Screen reader compatibility, high-contrast options and closed captions.
- Mobile-Friendly Design: Fast loading, touch-friendly elements and responsive layouts.
- A Design That Reflects Your School: Strong imagery, consistent visual identity and a professional feel.
- Interactive Tools: Virtual tours, parent portals and a well-maintained news and events section.
- Organised Content: Clear categories covering admissions, curriculum, safeguarding and parent resources.
- Regular Updates: Security checks, content reviews and performance monitoring.
These are the elements that separate a school website that works from one that just exists.
Easy Navigation
Parents, governors, prospective families and staff all use your website and they all want different things. Good navigation makes it easy for each of them to find what they need quickly without having to hunt around or guess where things might be.
The main menu should use plain, clear labels that reflect how your school is actually structured. Think admissions, curriculum, news and contact rather than anything clever or jargon-heavy. It needs to work just as well on a mobile phone as it does on a desktop, which means collapsible menus, touch-friendly buttons and minimal scrolling.
For academy trusts managing multiple schools, navigation becomes even more important. Visitors need to be able to find what they are looking for quickly and move between schools without feeling lost.
Accessibility
Accessibility is not optional. School websites in the UK are required to meet UK public sector accessibility requirements and for good reason. Your website needs to work for everyone, including parents and visitors with visual impairments, hearing difficulties or other accessibility needs.
In practice this means ensuring your site works with screen readers, offers high-contrast display options, uses scalable text and includes captions for video content. Running regular checks using tools like WAVE or Lighthouse will help you catch any issues before they become a problem.
Schools that get this right do not just tick a compliance box. They send a clear message about the kind of community they are.
Mobile-first design
Most parents will look at your website on their phone. If your site is slow to load, hard to read or fiddly to navigate on a small screen, you will lose them before they have read a thing.
A mobile-first approach means designing for the phone experience first and scaling up to desktop rather than the other way around. Compressed images, clean layouts and fast loading times all make a real difference here.
“We’ve worked with Lemongrass Media for many years and without a doubt they are one of the most client-friendly and professional companies we have ever worked with. Whether it is strategic design, or operational maintenance, nothing is ever too much and they are always just a phone call or email away.”
– Coopers Coborn School
A design that reflects your school
Design trends move on and a website that looked fresh five years ago can start to feel dated without anyone really noticing. Visitors notice though.
The design of your website sends a signal about the kind of school you are. Clean, well-considered layouts with strong imagery and a consistent visual identity feel professional and trustworthy. Cluttered pages, inconsistent fonts and low-quality photos have the opposite effect regardless of how good your content is.
This does not mean chasing every new trend. It means having a design that feels considered and reflects your school accurately.
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Interactive features
Virtual tours, parent portals, event calendars and news feeds all give visitors a reason to engage with your site rather than simply read it and leave. For prospective families in particular, a virtual tour can be genuinely persuasive, giving them a feel for the school before they have visited in person.
These features do not need to be complicated to be effective. A well-maintained news section or a clear events calendar shows that the school is active, organised and communicating well with its community.
“Lemongrass are 100% client-focussed. You just know that you are in safe hands from day one. They are able to provide guidance, suggestions and helpful examples for any ideas or questions that are thrown their way. The team are always quick to respond to us, nothing is too much trouble and they deal with everything in a calm, friendly and professional manner.”
– St Bart’s School
Well-organised content
The content on your website needs to be easy to find and easy to read. That means sensible categories, short paragraphs and pages that get to the point quickly.
Admissions information, term dates, curriculum details, safeguarding policies and contact information should all be straightforward to locate. If a parent has to click through three pages to find a basic answer, something needs simplifying.
Regular maintenance
A school website is not something you build once and leave. Content goes out of date, policies change, staff move on and new events need adding. A website that has not been updated recently is one that parents and prospective families will notice.
Regular maintenance also covers security updates, performance checks and making sure everything loads and displays correctly across different devices and browsers. It is worth building this into your planning rather than treating it as an afterthought.
If you are a headteacher or business manager reviewing your current school website, or considering a new build, we would be glad to talk it through. We have spent years working with schools across Hertfordshire, Milton Keynes and the Home Counties and understand the pressures schools face around budget, time and making the case to governors. Get in touch for an honest assessment of where things stand.
About Lemongrass Media
Lemongrass Media is a boutique website design agency based in Milton Keynes, specialising in school and corporate website design across the Home Counties. We combine deep sector knowledge with modern design expertise to create websites that don’t just look good but also attract pupils, engage parents and support your school’s success.
Contact us | View our school website portfolio | School Website Design Services
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