Turn Your School Website into a Virtual Recruiting Tool
Spring is prime time in the era of school choice. In normal years, many schools offer school tours and open houses to invite prospective families to their schools in person. But in a pandemic, opening school doors to the community is not advisable in most areas. What can schools do? In times like these, the school website can be a powerful tool for recruiting and virtual school tours. Here are five steps to making it work.
1. Make Sure Your Website Tells Your Story
Make sure prospective families can easily find the information they are looking for on your website. Pay special attention to your home page and pages for About Us, Academics, Student Life, Extracurriculars, etc. What story does your website tell? Does it give a full picture of what day-to-day life is like for your students? Does it highlight all the things that make you unique and special?
Prospective families may be especially interested in:
Basic information about your school, including total enrollment, class size, student report card or achievement rankings, and school history
Information about academic programs, including basic curricula and unique courses, projects or academic models
Extracurricular programs and opportunities
Before and after school programs
Background and experience levels for teachers and administrative staff
Overall school philosophy or approach
Support/accommodations for students with disabilities or learning differences
See how we helped Queens Explorers Magnet School tell their story through branding: Expert Support for a Great School Website.
The About Us page for Queens Explorers Magnet School shares information targeted to prospective families.
2. Bring Your School to Life with Photos and Video
Messaging is important, but images are the first things that will grab people’s attention on the school website. If you don’t already have great images, consider investing in some professional photography—or making it a student project or contest. Some tips:
Look for images that highlight the unique programs or facilities at your school.
Action shots with people are generally more engaging than static images of rooms, and close-ups of one or a few people capture more attention than large group shots. (Don’t forget to get releases signed for all student shots!)
Images with vibrant colors will bring the site to life.
Short video clips with testimonials from students, parents or teachers can be highly effective. Shorter clips (90 seconds or less) tend to perform better than long videos.
Vibrant images featuring special programs from the school help to bring this school to life on their home page.
3. Consider Adding a Virtual Tour
Some schools are also adding virtual tour videos to their websites. These can be informal walkthroughs created in-house or professionally produced, polished tours created by a media company. A virtual tour video may be several minutes long and include a walkthrough of the school with narration explaining what viewers are seeing.
Some companies will even create interactive 3D tours that allow viewers to “walk” through the space themselves. Realty companies, museums and tourism sites have used this technology for some time. The technology is now more commonplace and affordable, putting it within reach for many schools.
Check out this great one from the Bronxwood Preparatory Academy: Bronxwood Virtual Tour
Screenshot from Bronxwood Preparatory Academy Interactive Virtual Tour.
4. Provide Multiple Methods to Contact You
When parents can’t just drop by the office, it’s critical to make sure they know how they can contact you.
Put contact information on the footer of your website where it is accessible from every page and prominently on your About Us or Contact Us page.
Parents should have options to communicate with you both synchronously and asynchronously.
Make sure parents know when phone lines and/or website chat will be manned so they can talk to a live person.
Provide direct contact information for specific departments or staff members where appropriate and make sure people know who to call for different types of questions.
Communication channels may include:
Phone number(s)
Live chat
Email(s)
Social media
5. Schedule a Virtual Open House
If a physical open house is out of the question this year, schedule a virtual one! Nothing beats the opportunity for families to talk to people at your school live and get their questions answered. Web conferencing programs like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting or Google Hangouts (among many others) make it easy to schedule an online open house that families can attend from the comfort of home.
Your school website can play an important role in your virtual open house. Some schools are using the website as the centerpiece of a live virtual tour, pulling up images and pages from the website using screen sharing tools in their conferencing software.
Think about all of the elements of the school you would showcase during a traditional open house. How can you recreate these in a virtual format? What elements could you add to your website to facilitate a virtual showcase?
Let parents hear from both administrators and teachers during the open house.
Make it interactive. Schedule plenty of time for Q&A from your audience.
Schedule several sessions at different times to allow as many people as possible to participate. Consider recording a session for families who are not able to attend live.
Need help getting your school website ready for open house season? We can give your website a fast, stress-free website makeover in just 2-3 weeks—with very little work on your part! Ask us about our branding services for schools.