Sprouting Success – Nursery Website Guide
We talk about the importance of a well-designed nursery website, highlighting key elements to effectively attract and inform prospective parents.
Do I need a website for my nursery?
A website acts as the core of all conversations and campaigns. It is ultimately where people are directed to find out more, discover your brand and get in contact. Often the website is the first impression of your nursery and so it is vital to get it right, take a look at our basic website checklist to see what you might need.
Sitemap – Plan ahead and consider the areas and pages that you need for your audiences. Its more than just a Homepage, consider including reviews, more details about your rooms, events, resources, policies, curriculum, funding, blogs and more. Remember you need to maintain the content so set achievable goals and ensure that it is user friendly and information is easy to find. The less clicks the better to avoid loosing visitors.
Help families find you – A website is only good if it can be found, consider your domain, is it relevant and easy to remember? Is it consistent across the site pages? The content on your site also promotes SEO, keeping it refreshed and using key terms will help families find you on search engines.
Responsiveness – Your website will be viewed on various laptops and monitors of different screen sizes, tables and mobile phones. Check that your content is responsive based on how it is being viewed otherwise text could overlap images and leave big spacing resulting in a negative experience.
Brand and initial impressions – Your website is likely the first impression of your business, ensure your brand is clear, relevant and consistent across the site. The better your brand, the more memorable and trusted it will become. Create brand guidelines to ensure that all content is unified and reflects your nursery.
Information and imagery – Ensure that information and wording is credible and concise, people don’t want to scroll through content to find what they are looking for, avoid rambling and focus on the important stuff! The same for imagery and video content, ensure if reflects your brand and where possible use your own photos of rooms and children to give a real portrayal of the setting. Always remember to ensure you have written consent for all images/video used for the right purposes as well as copyright otherwise you could face legal action.
Minimal clicks – It is key to ensure you have clear call to actions across your website, a button or form should be visible at every stage to encourage converting prospective parents into contacts.
Accessible and Secure – Your website should be inclusive and cater for all users, for example you might ensure your font is dyslexia friendly, and check that it is accessible via audio for blind visitors. Security is also key to building trust with visitors and protecting their data when shared.
Legal – There are legal requirements for all websites and so you must ensure that all are adhered to from day one. Ensure you provide clear access to key policies such as your privacy policy, cookie policy, and terms and conditions. You must also ensure your contact details and company number are listed as well as other data such as Ofsted results.
Parents and Team – Consider your audience and whether dedicated pages are needed to share information, it might be that these are password protected to secure data and restrict access. For example, you might include all policies for families to easily access and view, but wish to hide these from visitors until they are registered to attend.
Contact, Admissions & Forms – Visitors need quick and easy methods to contact your nursery and request information. Capturing data is beneficial to convert to tours and registration so make the initial step just one or two fields. More enhanced forms can also be built to smooth admin, for example, registering a child for a place. Ensure that all forms are secure, functioning and link to the next stages so no one is missed. Review processes and automated messages that display on screen or are emailed on the submission of a form, is there automatic triggers to send follow up reminders or further information to alleviate workload for your team? Experience the website as a first time user and check the process and experience to ensure it meets expectations.
Maintenance – Much like your nursery setting, the website is an ongoing project, there will always be updates and refreshed content so make sure it is easy to manage so dedicate time to ensuring it reflects your brand in the right light.
Where do I start?
If you already have a website in place, run an audit to review each area. Often websites are built but not always maintained and refreshed, so as your business evolves, the original content, information and imagery may no longer reflect your brand. When juggling childcare, ratios, admin and the hundreds of other day to day jobs at settings, the website is often lower down the list and with limited time in each day things can get missed. Whether maintaining your website inhouse or trusting an external supplier such as Sprout, ensure that attention to detail, rigorous testing, varying perspectives and knowledge of websites, coding and more are regularly considered.
As well as legal requirements, Ofsted also provide guidance to ensure you have everything you need on your website, from essential items to recommendations,
Click here to download a free guide to Ofsted website requirements
How long will it take?
How long is a piece of string? A basic website with a few pages, minimal functionality and ready to go content can be live within a week, but more realistically a comprehensive website will take one to two months to be ready to launch.
It is possible to buy an off the shelf pre-built website to save time and costs, but cutting corners often impacts later down the line with limitations on web development and visitor results. Many agencies will build a website but limit access so that if you part company you risk loosing your website and work in creating it.
Select the right option for you and consider the future, if you want to own your website ensure that is included in the terms and conditions, whether using an off the shelf option or choosing an agency. Consider functionality and how this may evolve with your business, can you easily add new settings? Is it user friendly and easy to find? Also consider regular updates, keep your content fresh to score higher on Google and keep visitors returning, how easy is it to make a quick change or fix a typo?
Responding to Results
Finally, the beauty of digital activity is that everything is transparent, by ensuring analytics tracking is active across all your pages you can monitor visitors, time spent on specific sections and bottlenecks. Monthly reporting is recommended to monitor peaks and troughs throughout the year and compare to previous months/years. When launching a new campaign, such as a recruitment drive or open day, track visitors to dedicated landing pages and how they found you, that way you can focus on the marketing activities that are delivering results and increase/pause activity as needed saving time and money.
Book a website audit today or build a site to suit your growing needs.