Peter L. Mason '93, Director of Communications
Here at Shore Country Day School, we've been spending a lot of time talking about our website. Launched this past fall, the reactions, for the most part, have been extremely positive (we even won an award). We have received some great feedback about the external site as well as the password protected section called MyShore, and as a result we have made some improvements to the navigation (rolling out in the next few weeks).
Although we just launched our site, we are already in discussions about the next re-design. Whereas a few years back you might have your site remain stagnant for a few years, now the ' website re-design' is more of a process than an event, evidence in the fact we are already making some adjustments to our site and it is barely six months old.
This article was recently tweeted and I found it interesting to learn what some of the web trends currently are. Whereas many may not be 'appropriate' for an educational institution, part of my job (and that of the web team) is to figure out what pieces of these new trends are. Moreover, do these design changes enhance the experience for our prospective and current families? Working in a school, it is easy to get sucked into the 'this is what everybody else is doing' group-think mentality. Or, to the contrary, the 'this is the coolest thing ever' design which really is just not appropriate for your users (this can also happen with photography, but a topic for another time). The trick for us is to find the balance between what our users are accustomed to seeing on other school websites for ease of navigation, while trying to be unique, innovative, and consistent amongst all our communication platforms.
The web provides the best means for capturing the vitality of everyday life here at Shore, but it is definitely easier said than done.
