Most people use the Internet as a source of instant information and go online with a specific purpose in mind. Visitors to school district Web sites are no exception. Your district site should aim to be a welcoming, well-organized and engaging destination for parents, students, faculty and the community-at-large––a helpful place to find all manner of soughtafter information. “For school districts, a Web site is an integral component to growing a forward-thinking, quality learning environment. By planting the seed to develop a meaningful Web presence, those in education––at the district, school and classroom level––can positively impact and inspire students, parents, faculty and the entire community,” says Rob Lamy, chief executive officer of SchoolWorld.
Here is our perspective on important basic elements and approaches for an effective, efficient district Web site, in the areas of design, navigation, usability, content and interactivity. The guidance is based largely on the best practices we’ve identified in conducting our monthly district site evaluations for the column “How Well Does This Web Site Work?”
Design and Navigation
Consistency and clarity are critical to a Web site’s look and feel. Beyond portraying the distinct character and uniqueness of a school district, the site design should be well-organized, uncluttered and appealing to the widest audience. A visitor’s experience should be enhanced by continuity in layout, so that he or she will know what to expect. This can be achieved via a consistent treatment of text, images and links on the majority of a site’s pages.
In terms of site infrastructure, it is an excellent idea to use confi gurable, scalable page templates that can quickly accommodatefuture content growth (both text and graphics) and to make future site redesigns as painless as possible.
Intuitive and sensible navigation throughout a site is a key element for efficiency and effectiveness. Navigation tabs—be they in bars across the bottom or top of the pages, or in left-or-right-side boxes—must be clearly named. Acronyms and abbreviations that have internal meaning should be avoided as nav link labels, as they often make no sense to visitors.
Too many choices will overwhelm, and unnecessary redundancy will confuse. Consistent, easy-to-understand navigation across a site and/or in specific site sections is the goal. To aid visitors further in moving smoothly around the site, a breadcrumb trail (links that appear atop pages to indicate the path followed to get there, allowing a quick retrace of steps) is a helpful and worthy feature.
The Orange County (Fla.) Public Schools (www.ocps.net) has succeeded in putting these design and navigation essentials into action. “We consider our Web site to be an increasingly valuable and popular medium to share our good news and important news,” notes Dylan Thomas, director of community relations for OCPS. “The Web staff is driven to keep the pages current using the news slide ‘spinner’ [slide show], the calendar and other dynamic components. We have found a layout that works, and we try to keep the site tidy, without too much content. One measure of our success is a decrease of more than 1,000 calls per month to our main district phone number between 2006 to 2007 and 2007 to 2008.”
The OCPS site is maintained by four staff members who share various duties and are primarily part of the community relations department.
Usability
District Web sites have a wide-ranging constituency to which to cater. To achieve optimal usability, a district site must speak to and serve parents, students, faculty and other employees, and community residents and leaders. Information should be compartmentalized and easy to find via efficient browsability and a high-performing search function. In terms of site search access, a search box (preferably located near the top right of pages) is optimal. Offering an adjacent link to a site map, as an alternative to locating content, is most helpful. Search results should be complete, deep and sensible. To enhance user satisfaction, advanced search options that narrow and sort results by criteria (such as date and topic) are advisable.
