Dame Allan’s Schools is an independent school based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, providing education for early years, juniors, senior and sixth form students. The school had recently moved away from its diamond structure, bringing together all students across every year group under a single, co-educational school model.
Dame Allan’s approached UX agency Creo with an outdated website and content management system (CMS), with the goal of completely renewing their digital presence within a short space of time. The school’s proposed go-live date coincided with the expected day offers were sent to prospective parents, meaning the new website needed to be able to handle high rates of traffic from launch.
One of the key challenges for our team, was delivering a flexible, easy-to-manage website within a fast turnaround, also ensuring the platform would be stable and scalable, where parents can find information easily, and personalised content to match potential students’ interests.
Our team recognised the need for a flexible CMS system, alongside a research-led approach to user experience (UX) within the website.
Success for the project was defined in two ways: launching the website on the initially proposed timeline, and achieving and maintaining a long-term growth of enquiries for the school’s open days.
To guide the design and content strategy, our digital team conducted five rounds of stakeholder interviews. These conversations helped us to understand what it was that parents were eager to learn about Dame Allan’s. Our research also included competitor analysis, gathering stakeholders’ views on competing schools and their digital presence; what they thought worked well, and where opportunities arose to differentiate.
Alongside this were five rounds of user interviews, learning how users would navigate a website while researching independent schools, including what they prioritise and deem as key information when deciding what school is best for their child.
The research gathered demonstrated that parents wanted a clear picture of a day in the life of a pupil at Dame Allan’s, understanding what they get up to and what they take part in. It was through this research that we found Dame Allan’s pastoral care and co-curricular offers stood out against any other school and competitor in the area.
Our team also found that the best way to decide on their child’s future school is involving parents in a physical experience, such as open days, which help parents to understand the experience, opportunities and culture, and envision life at Dame Allan’s.
Our work included producing a comprehensive report based on our research findings and developing user personas that represented key audience groups and idealistic examples of the site’s users, including prospective parents of Dame Allan’s pupils.
As part of our digital design strategy, we created user flows to visualise how visitors would navigate the site, mapping journeys of different users, ensuring the new design would simplify the overall experience.
We also developed detailed site plans to structuring the site, outlining the organisation of content across all pages, ensuring the build supported both user needs and the school’s key objectives.
The work was received extremely positively by the client. Following a dedicated training meeting, the client is now able to independently edit bespoke elements of the website that were introduced to the new design. The client can also navigate the updated site quickly and efficiently, reflecting a smoother user experience for visitors overall.
The site has been built to support high levels of future traffic, with its performance successfully tested during increased visits from prospective parents and pupils.
Amy Patterson, Senior PR and Communications Officer at Dame Allan’s stated:
Whether you’re planning a new website, refreshing an existing one or looking to improve how your brand performs online, we’d love to hear about it. Get in touch and let’s see what we could create together.
