Sunday 17 August 2014

Top 3 Tips for an effective web design for educational institutes



Effective web design narrows down on the principle of optimum usability and utility of the website. Apart from being visually captivating, a website should also offer a user-centric approach through its content and design. Assembling the data on one platform to make sure that the user can perceive it effectively should be the whole idea behind designing on web. Below are the basic principles that should be kept in mind to advance an effective web design.   


Consider the end-user’s psyche

Keeping in mind a user-centric approach, it is important to design the website as per the end user’s requirement. For instance, website designing services for colleges should fulfill usability criteria of students, parents, teachers etc. The various programs offered by the institution should be listed meticulously, placement avenues, the scope of the institution etc. all these aspects are eminent to cover to make it user-centric.

Understanding the user’s psychology is important, after all the features designed on the website are meant to be accessed by them; else it would have been non-existent.

Strive for major feature exposure

Web designing is about creative display of your institution. However, extensive use of graphics and animation may leave the content and other important details of the website unnoticed. It is important to know where to use animation and in what degree it should be incorporated to support your website. Depending upon the nature of business, use of animation should be devised in web designing. Leading web developing companies that render website development services for universities focus on making minimal use animation, pop-ups etc. that generally dissuade the institution from voicing its purpose.

 A web design layout for an educational website should be more informative giving details about the programmes offered, employment scope, distance learning avenues etc. Animation here should be used to display the information in the most user-friendly manner. Unnecessary graphics and animation may overshadow the information display. Instead, use of catchy graphics should be made to accentuate the prime offerings of the institute.

Let your visitor breathe
Provision for your visitors’ query and feedback is essential. Assailing the user with information without leaving scope for his inputs does not make a good web layout. Furthermore, leaving your user’s queries unattended is embarrassing. This will leave your web visitor disappointed, adversely affecting your brand name as well.

Keeping in mind these tips can help to design a ‘user specific’ website especially for educational institutes.

Wednesday 23 July 2014

Why periodical website maintenance is necessary?

Maintenance is necessary for proper functioning of a car, lawn and your health too. Likewise, maintenance of websites is important for their proper working. A website gives your business an online personality, and you would want to beautify it to attract more customers. A well-kept website is admired by every visitor. An up-to-date site is a must-have for:-

•    Regularly attracting clients
•    Having envious search engine rankings
•    Offering prospects and existing customers new information about products and services
•    Offering information to a business’s stake holders

High significance of a website’s maintenance task has led many leading Web development companies to offer website AMC service. Like any other businesses, most education institutions avail educational website AMC services.

What all work does website maintenance include?

An unmaintained site creates poor user experience. No latest news, no updated content, broken links can really devastate a visitor’s experience. In totality, an unmaintained site leaves many visitors unimpressed, and you can end up losing a substantial amount of business. That’s a threat to a business’ existence. Therefore, it’s apt to maintain your website periodically. In general, the maintenance activities of a website include:- 

•    Content addition

Your website can always have a lot of new content for interested visitors. The content can be related to –

o    Company news
o    Employee addition
o    Industry news
o    Update content related to products and/or services
o    Create PDFs that offer informative content related to products/services

•    Broken links must be done away with

You want visitors to be satisfied after visiting your site. And one way of offering a quality visiting experience to every visitor is by getting rid of broken links. Every internal link of your site must be checked. Further, each and every outgoing link must be tested a couple of times every year. Warning! A website falls in search engine rankings if it’s strewn with broken links.

Friday 16 May 2014

Simple Ways to Improve a School Website


A school website not only offers information to parents and pupils, but also becomes an effective marketing tool. The internet sites of a school showcase its existence in the binary world. A school website briefs about the institute’s policy as well as learning environment to existing and prospective students. All these are some of the jobs that are performed by a school’s site. The post gives some quick tips to make the best educational website designs.

Register on social media platforms

A robust social presence is the key to success in today’s commercial world. It is advisable to register a school’s name over different social media platforms such as Google+, Twitter, Face book, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Flicker, and the like. Once any social networking account is made, add feeds (from the school’s website) over it. A high-quality Content Management System (CMS) is used to add feeds.

Begin blogging

All top educational web sites’ CMS platforms support a built-in blog feature. The principal should start blogging about the latest policy amendments carried out by the school’s board. The marketing head of the school should blog about the news and events. Any type of school trip must be written about in blogs (it’s preferable to add pictures to a post). Note: a blog need not be insightful; rather it should be interesting and written keeping in mind the target audiences (pupils, teachers and students).

Don’t avoid SEO

SEO is one of the significant tools that help a school internet site to get high rankings on search engine(s). Doing proper SEO for a school website starts by determining top 10 key phrases and keywords that can help bolster the institute’s web presence.

These tips don’t confine to schools only; rather, they are implemented while designing sites for different types of educational institutions. Every other college websites design follows similar tips to make an impactful web presence.

Monday 14 April 2014

Must-Have Elements on a School Website



Like any sector, the marvels of web development benefit education also. Nowadays, every school has a website; however, there lies a distinction between a plain school site and the best educational website. There are few elements that should be present on an educational internet site to heighten the visitors’ experience. Read on to discover these elements.



Inviting and friendly design

Inviting, user-friendly design must be present at a school’s website. One must remember that the educational site is viewed by students (existing as well as prospective) and their parents. A friendly site design always helps the visitors find the desired information in no time. Additionally, use photos along with bright colors to fill the empty spaces. Design a charming homepage as it is the face of the website.

Up-to-date information

An education internet site must be updated regularly. Focus on updating the newsletters; if done otherwise, then a sense of mismanagement and neglect is reflected. Always note, a website is today’s cutting-edge marketing tool.

A webpage having the photos of key staffers

A smiling photo of each staffer with his/her experience should be present on a section of the website. Do not cram the place by giving lengthy details of every staffer. A group photo of the entire staff is also useful.

A blog section

Having a blog is beneficial for building an image of the school. A blog that describes the everyday working at the school helps the visitors – especially prospective parents – get a feel of what is happening in the campus.

Great photos

Nice pictures of the campus as well as students should be uploaded on the website to make it enchanting. A gallery section should be present in a school website, describing the life at the campus. Great photos on a school site guide it to be among the best educational websites.

If a school site has all of these elements, then it can be ranked among the top 10 educational websites.

Monday 7 April 2014

Everything About Educational Websites




The modern-day globe swirls as per the evolving principles of the web technology. Undoubtedly, the internet has not only shrunken the world, but stepped up its competitiveness. Websites are imperative for every business – even education – to experience ubiquity. For an educational institution, the best website has to be the one offering quick answers to the questions of prospective students and their parents as well.

Ingredients to make the best college websites design

One element that is common to all the top educational web sites is their web friendliness. Some other tips that make a college’s website impaction are:-

Text and HTML Newsletters

Newsletters have been a prominent tool to keep the educational website’s visitors updated about the latest happenings at a college. Some of the best ways to create newsletters are through text or HTML. The educational institute can add graphics on a newsletter whenever it is created using HTML. Nowadays, apart from newsletters, the feature of crawling news (preferably on the top) on an educational site is all the rage.

Get an online calendar

A college website having online calendar helps visitors know about the important events and dates of an educational institution. The institute along with the hired web development company must ensure that the web calendar is the cleanest and simplest of ways to determine what is happening at the campus.

Slideshows

It is always significant to create a slideshow of the latest photos of campus, students and events held. The slideshow should be on the homepage, and its duration has to be not too tardy.

Social Media Optimization (SMO)

SMO has been one the primary tools that has helped in boosting an educational institute’s website and presence.

Apart from these factors that help in making a superior college internet site, most educational institutions are creating educational applications to assist students for strengthening their knowledge base.   

Thursday 27 March 2014

Everything About An Interactive School Website





Most schools are breaking the traditional methods of communications such as brochure and circulars. The contemporary crop of schools brought a new trend that caught on like wildfire among the age-old institutes also; the trend of building a school website. The functionality and design of a school internet site have helped a school become popular.

Further, the technology helps educational institutes use the web used as a social platform and not merely a school education portal. At present, with the explosion of Social Media Optimization (SMO), the trend dictates a school to not only build an education portal India, but have an interactive school website too.

The focus is shifted from school to end user

Everyone – faculty members, students and/or parents – wishes to socially experience a content and comment on it. In previous times, the information was passed by a mode of communication that school was convenient using. However, the focal point is shifted from schools to end users; most end users wish to access information using social channels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Blogs, to mention but a few.

A school’s interactive website is a single hub connecting all these social platforms. Also, communicating via these social juggernauts is apt for enhancing the visibility of an educational institution. 

Measuring the reaction of the end users

In previous times, a school was not concerned with the reactions and satisfactory levels of the end user who experiences the final content. Nevertheless, with the advancements in the web technology, a school can use several tools such as Google Analytic s to gauge the reaction of end users. Also, with Google Analytic s, a website administrator can easily examine the rate at which users are visiting the site.

With the changes in times and extreme competitive culture, it is beneficial for school’s to overhaul its image by adopting new trends of marketing and designing interactive internet site.