School Website Podcast – Branding, Design & Protecting Children’s Safety

PRITESH (HOST): Hi, and welcome back for another episode in our podcast series with Classroom365 and your host, Pritesh. Today, we’ll be joined by Karen from KCreate, with whom we work closely to design and develop websites for schools and businesses. Stay tuned to learn what makes a good school website and how your content can influence your rankings on Google. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.

PRITESH: Hi, everybody, and welcome back for another podcast with Classroom365. I’m your host again, Pritesh. Today, we have Karen from KCreate. Karen has been working with us designing and developing websites for quite a few years now. Karen, how long have you been working with us?

KAREN: Gosh, I think it’s probably over 20 years I’ve worked with you guys. That shows my age, doesn’t it? It is nice to speak to you, Pritesh.

PRITESH: Thanks, Karen, for joining us. So, Karen, you design websites for schools, which is our main core business – supporting schools. You don’t just do websites for schools; you also create websites for different industries. How does it differ from making school websites to making business websites?

KAREN: Well, what’s wonderful, every job I do is different. Doing different jobs is exciting because I do websites for small to medium-sized businesses. A big part of my business is creating websites for schools and different websites, from caravan sites and metal recycling sites to complementary health websites, taxi websites, and schools. They’re all so different. I love design as well because that’s what I did when I was at university. I did a fine art degree. So, I feel lucky to use my art to do my business work.

PRITESH: You know what, Karen – It is so interesting how you can tie up the artistry into designing websites because it involves an eye for detail and creativity. I’ve always wanted to ask you, but I’ve never had the chance because we speak about school websites whenever we speak. How did you get into this? Also, having done this for 20 years, platforms have changed. Web languages, if that’s what you call them, have changed, and wizards, there are so many tools out there now. How have you kept up with it all, and how did you get into it in the first place?

KAREN: It’s evolved so much since I started when everything was very static. With the old HTML, making changes was very much the customer had come back to me, and I would have to manage it all. But now, the web has evolved with content management systems, which we do for the schools, so the teachers and the admin staff can manage it easily.

It’s powerful and keeps websites current and new, which Google loves. Google wants new content and doesn’t want these static sites that don’t do anything. They want fresh content, which is very powerful. I also use WordPress, which is very user-friendly. It’s easy for people to log on and be able to make little text changes or upload their newsletters. That’s how it’s evolved over the years.

PRITESH: It’s quite daunting for some people because I don’t profess to be an oracle on websites. I’d rather leave it to professionals like you. But, interestingly, people see the website, and they think it’s just a page. The amount of work that goes into the background, like you just said, can tie into so many other different things now with the advent of social media and the integration of things like Instagram, Facebook and other platforms that schools want to have a presence on and as you just mentioned about Google search. How does all this tie in, and what are your views? There might be some sensitive areas they need to be aware of, which other businesses might not apply to.

KAREN: Well, there’s big awareness with social media and safeguarding, as well as having photos of children on the internet. All the schools will have lots of forms that parents must fill out, with all the tick boxes. Do they want their children to be on social media? If they are in a performance, they can always blur the faces on the photos.

You’re welcome to take photos, but as long as they’re not put on social media unless it’s only your child in the photograph. Hopefully, all schools do that because many people don’t want any online presence until the children are adults, don’t they?

PRITESH: Absolutely, that’s a very good point. It’s not just a case of saying we want to publicise what kind of children we’ve got, the diversity in our schools, and our uniform. We must be aware of putting children on social media and where people can view the pictures. That’s an excellent point, Karen.

So the websites we’re creating for our schools, there’s quite an advantage for a school to have a good website because it can demonstrate their diversity. It can promote their schools in areas of London where pupil numbers are falling, for example, and attract families to particular schools. It can showcase a school which may have a perception of being one way, but in fact, getting to know what the school does can inform parents that it offers much more than they can see at face value. Sometimes, you don’t get the full impression when you hear things from word of mouth. What have we been doing on websites? What have schools been requesting on their websites, and what can they put on their website to attract people? Rebranding, for example?

KAREN: Yes, that’s a massive thing. Say if their website is static, like I said before, it hasn’t got any fresh content, and their logo looks old-fashioned with the old crests and things like that. Rebranding the whole look and layout of the site so it’s user-friendly and parents can easily navigate with one click to areas they need, like term dates. Parents, they’re on their phones all the time, aren’t they? Having something that works well on the phone, is responsive, and shrinks down on any size of the device is essential now for the ease of finding information. They want to find out what little Jimmy must do on a Monday morning!

PRITESH: Absolutely, and as you said earlier, WordPress, as your platform, enables schools to upload content easily. If they get their websites designed and developed with us and you, we can show them how it’s done, guide them through that process, and support them so that they can make the whole process easy. They can update information when needed and when they feel it needs to be released.

With everything you’ve just said, surely it makes more sense to have a managed website. With everything you’ve just said, surely it makes more sense to have a managed website. You see all these adverts now and create your own website. It’s easy – here’s a wizard! I don’t think it’s that easy because with schools, as you said, you can’t just have a static website. Content needs to evolve, things are going to change, and events are going to happen. What are your views on having a managed website instead of going out alone? Because I tell you something, we get approached all the time where somebody’s had a go at it, made a bit of a mess and then said, guys, can you help us out? That’s where you’ve come in.

KAREN: Me too, and that’s something that I have too with people having a go, and most of the time when it happens, they will have registered the domain name with somebody, and it’s quite cheap to do. Then, there are all these hidden costs of moving the site from the cheap site. Then the aggro of everything they’ve done is not compatible. So, things aren’t in the position they want them to be. I would advise it, especially for a school, because it needs to work and be professional. You can have massive issues with WordPress and want to keep the software up to date. You have to update its security because you’re very easily hacked if you don’t.

With the maintenance contracts that I do, I offer a daily backup system in case something does go bang or the teacher changes something they didn’t realise, and we can go back a day. The server should be updated with the latest PHP and generally kept up-to-date, modern, and fast because Google only likes fast websites. If the teachers upload these massive pictures from their phones that are 2.5 Mb, that haven’t run through software I installed to compress those images, then the page takes forever to load, and then Google just will put you right down in the rankings because it is not accessible.

So that’s something else I do for schools – make the website completely accessible. People can read it as it is or prefer a black screen. You can click a button and change the text and content so that it’s better for how they like to read stuff on the phone. Also, very importantly, the website needs to be on a secure server if they have users logging in because many of the teachers for schools I’ve done want to set up blogs. They manage a blog for each year’s group and have their blog within the website. That needs to be very secure, and as it’s children’s content, it needs to be on a secure server.

PRITESH: Cool. All very relevant information, especially about the secure server and the backups. The last thing you need is for the website to go down, and then it’s not up for ages while people try and get it all sorted out again. You also mentioned using photographs, which I was going to talk about. So, for example, it’s OK if schools take photographs which everyone is happy to use, and then they use them. I know I’ve taken photographs for you in the past, Karen.

Instead of just going online, finding pictures you may not be allowed to use and using them could land you in trouble, which is another reason for taking professional advice. The other thing, Karen, if you could talk to us a little about it, is how important Google rankings are because people listening may not be aware of how your position in Google comes about and what affects it.

KAREN: That’s an excellent point as well. What we’ve said about designing and having a web designer do it professionally is most important. WordPress generates amazing search engine-friendly code that Google likes. Some content management systems don’t generate search engine-friendly code. That will be detrimental to coming higher up in the rankings. Everything, like the different headings you use, the headings in the wrong order, and your tags, can affect your performance on Google. When websites go live, you want them to be as high as possible in search engines and with the best way of getting them up there!

PRITESH: That’s all great information. I find it interesting because Mark looks after the website internally and does a lot of work on it. He’s spoken to me about the Google search engine and SEO. Is that right? SEO, rankings, and directing traffic to us using many different methods.

KAREN: Yes, that’s right.

PRITESH: That’s great, Karen. I think this has been really informative, and I’ve learned a lot from it because I don’t get to speak to you and ask you in-depth questions about what’s happening. It’s usually about someone who needs a website. “Can you please help?” and that’s when you step in.

KAREN: And vice versa, when schools move to you, I have my dedicated server for all my customers and your schools. If a school wants to move their website hosting to us, I will contact you guys to change the DNS. But then it just suddenly all works!

PRITESH: Brilliant. You make it sound so simple. So that’s why I leave all the website stuff to the professionals like KCreate. Thanks very much, Karen.

KAREN: Thank you so much, Pritesh. Lovely to chat with you today.

PRITESH: Thank you, Karen, and thanks, everybody, for listening. Don’t forget to like, subscribe and watch out for our next episode. Bye, everyone.