The Ideal School Website

See the latest examples of our award winning school websites on our home page.

Introduction

Arrowscape believes that every school, even the smallest, deserves a top-quality, professional looking, easy to navigate, interesting and vibrant website that truly reflects the image and ethos of the school.

Unlike some companies, we don't work with limited templates - every one of our school websites is uniquely developed for each individual school.

School websites come in all shapes and sizes, and range from the very good to the downright bad. All too often we have seen sites that really do no justice to the school. These are sometimes designed by parents, teachers or even pupils. Whilst we applaud the efforts made by these people, who generally give their time voluntarily, the end result can frequently be a let down. The Headteacher and Governors may then be reluctant to put their full strength behind the promotion of the site, which often means it will 'sit there' on the web, attracting very few visitors and not being used to its fullest extent.

By working in partnership with you, Arrowscape ensure that every school receives a great-value, first-class website and an on-going support service second-to-none.

The Initial Visit

We come and visit you at school to sit down and discuss exactly what you would like to see in your website. Obviously, we have lots of ideas that stem from our experience in designing previous sites and our extensive research, but the main objective is to ensure your website provides exactly what you want from it.

Another purpose of the visit may be to take digital photographs in and around school for use on the website, although many schools have their own digital cameras these days, and like to do this in their own time.

Every website is enhanced by the careful use of photographs. We would generally expect to see photos of the school building, grounds, classrooms, work done by the children, and so on. Pictures of a school without any children in it do look somewhat strange!

If you already have actual photographs that you would like to include on your website, we can happily scan them for you.

Website Structure and Content Report

After the visit, we will produce a detailed summary of everything we have discussed. This report will give you a flavour of the finished design of your site, will show you the structure of the site (what the individual web pages will be called, and where they will be) and will serve as a reminder of the content that you have agreed to provide.

Whilst Arrowscape can put together your site in terms of design and structure, a lot of the content (i.e. the actual 'words' on the pages) can only be written by persons from school.

During the initial visit, you will tell us who is going to provide us with this content, and by which date. To save duplicating effort, you might find that a lot of the content for the website can be taken directly from an existing school prospectus or brochure. If this is the case, it will save you more time.

Web Hosting and Domain Names

Most schools already have an Internet Service Provider, often arranged by their LEA for the area as a whole. Regardless of who your ISP is, Arrowscape will liaise with them to ensure space is available to host your website. Then, when the time comes, we will work with them to put your site onto the 'live' Internet.

Whether you realise it or not, your school already has already been allocated its very own domain name. In Birmingham, for example, it is likely to be of the format: www.<schoolname>.bham.sch.uk

Quality Assurance

Once you have provided all the necessary content for the website, and once we have incorporated it into the site and made it 'live', you can have a period to check through everything and make sure it is complete and accurate.

Any errors or omissions or modifications can be passed to us, and we will change it accordingly. You might want to get other staff, or school governors, to check through the site with you so they, too, begin to get familiar with the web.

Search Engine Registration

Search Engines are frequently used by web surfers to find sites when then don't know the exact address (URL). They put a few keywords in, such as 'primary' 'school' 'birmingham' and see what the Search Engine returns. Whilst it is not absolutely vital to be registered with these sites, it is a good way to generate more visitors to your website.

On your behalf, Arrowscape will submit your site details to the top free Search Engines in the expectation that you will eventually get added to their databases. This will save you having to bother.

Future Updates

It is vitally important that your website, once live, remains up-to-date. There is nothing worse that seeing a website that has not been updated for months, even years. Web surfers are fickle people - if they visit your website a second time and see that it is out of date, they will not visit again.

This is where Arrowscape really soars above the service provided by other web developers. We offer a fully managed service which means you don't need to have the time, staff, skills, software or patience to maintain the site yourself.

Included with our website package is a whole year of updates. This means that, at any time, you can send new and updated information to us and we will amend your website accordingly.

After the end of the first year, the vast majority of our schools choose, by mutual agreement, to retain us (at a very modest fee) to continue looking after the website for future years. They're so pleased with the service we provide, and they simply don't have to worry about having the skills and time to update the website themselves.

At all times it is you who is in charge. You tell us what to update, and when. We just get on and do it for you!

Our First Class Service

Arrowscape pride ourselves on providing a first class service to our customers, which always includes after care and on-going support. This is one of the reasons why our existing customers are so happy to recommend us.