What does your school website media say about your school? Does your website have a focus on media? Our previous summer reading posts have covered engagement and key content, media is a fantastic addition to key content, and can help compliment your content designed for engagement. Well used media sets apart the best websites from the dull and dreary websites filled with empty spaces and pages of unbroken text. Here’s 6 things you can creatively use to enhance your school website design.

Read our overview to see how you can effectively utilise rich media on your school website.

School Website Media – High Quality Images

Ensuring your school website media is of the highest quality is a really important part of working with media. Adding any old photo to a page might work and improve the page a little (but maybe not). Rather a well selected correctly sized photograph will certainly enhance the work you’ve already done.
Read more about choosing and preparing images for your school website.

School Website Media – Photo Galleries

Photo galleries are an incredibly effective way of sharing your photos to enhance existing content or be the focal point of an article. School website media would be incomplete without photo galleries. They can be included within multiple pages, and even categorised for greater use.
Learn more about enhancing your school website media with photo galleries.

School Website Media – Flip Books

A well used flip book can effectively engage your reader with the content you’ve put in front of them. While some documents and content works best in a book format with clearly defined pages and separated content. (A prospectus is a great example of a document perfect for flip books.) Don’t assume all your school website media will work in a flip book. Sometimes the content just isn’t suitable for that format.
Learn more about using flip books to bring your content to life.

School Website Media – Videos

Video content is huge! It’s expected that adults in the UK are watching around an hour of online video content each day. While internet speeds are ever increasing and connectivity widens to make it more accessible than ever video content will continue to grow in use. Because of this we’ve got some tips to make sure you make the most of the tools available to you, and cover some of the options to creating and sharing your video content.
Learn more about using video on your school website.

School Website Media – Visitor Journey

Your school website media can play an effective part in guiding visitors around your website. First of all you can use splash images with adverts or notices to direct visitors. In addition you can use big image banners to share an important message or convey something about your school, again with links to click behind the banner.

What’s more your website may be able to display related content alongside articles visitors have previously read. Displayed at the bottom of the article you have just finished is another similar or related article with a heading “You may also be interested in” – of course in a non-intrusive, and genuinely interesting way.
Read more about using guiding the journeys of your website visitors.

School Website Media – Spiralling Content

Learning how to use your media effectively us one thing. But keeping up the good habits is another challenge to bear in mind. Think strategically and into the future with your content and your media. Most of all try to have a plan.

Therefore the simple things like planning to take photographs at an event, or scheduling some time to write the content should be a priority. As these habits develop you can take further steps to improve your media, your content and your whole website will be the better for it.
Read more about controlling your website and preventing it spiralling out of control.