This Monday, August 9th, Westminster Christian Academy’s new website was launched, and although it is the same page and URL, there were many flaws and updates that needed to be fixed or added. The problems with the old site were extensive, with many flaws in the system.
Jen Sengpiel, Head of Enrollment at Westminster, explains how Westminster “had been using a platform that was limited in its design abilities and function, that everything we wanted to add was an add-on so it became very costly. […] Our calendar was always breaking, the directory wasn’t working, and we got chronic complaints that it was hard to find anything. If you didn’t spell something exactly right in the search bar, it just wouldn’t show up. Everything was buried, we had too many pages, and it wasn’t optimized.”
The new website promises to be beneficial to current students, families, and faculty. However, the development of this project was not without its challenges. Many of the difficulties in developing a new website include working with an outside vendor, learning a new system, and cutting down information.
Amy Roff, Senior Graphic Designer and Communications Specialist, says that their new vendors “knew their stuff really well, but anytime you work with somebody who’s not working within your school specifically, they don’t always know your brand and voice. […] This is a whole new software for us, so we had to learn an entire new process, which took training on our end. […] We had a lot of pages at the beginning, so it took going through all that content, reading it and combining things to make pages more simplified. Reading through an entire website takes a lot of time, and the whole thing is very time intensive on top of our normal workloads.”
So, for the past year, the Westminster Communications and Marketing team has been dedicating their time and energy into developing changes for our school’s website. Much thought has been put into the tweaking of our school’s calling card, from calendar updates and new search features to adding a new Westminster News page.
Roff tells how the new site now “allows us to be able to update [the calendar] much easier, with more efficiency and speed. The great thing is that if during the week a time or place changes for an event, we can make real time edits to the page. […] We have opened up a whole new search feature, including the keyword search feature, quick links, and popular searches. […] Our new Westminster News page is helpful because instead of parents getting long emails about updates each Saturday, everything can quickly be found on the website.”
All of these new updates and changes have many benefits, such as aiding touring families in their observation of our school.
Sengpiel mentions that about “eighty percent of the traffic that comes from the website are perspective families that are shopping for schools. It’s going to help these families because the directories are easier to find, our calendar will be updated constantly so people will know what’s going on at the drop of a hat, and if anybody wants to know the course guide, they will be able to find the information easier.”
Due to our staff’s hard work over the past year, our school’s home page has undergone many changes and is now a much more modern site. So make sure you go to wcastl.org to check out our new and better website.
