St. John’s School & College | Website Build
St. John's School & College | Website Build
The Brief:
At Creative Blend we are privileged to work with some of the brightest minds in both business and in the charity sector. People with such passion it really does make creating new brands, websites, marketing campaigns a joy!
Our next case study is from a client who very much fits this profile. St. John’s School & College have been part of Brighton since 1886 where the support of those who need care and education began. Today St. John’s provides expert care and education to their student’s across the school in Seaford and college in Brighton.
Since 2018 we have provided digital support (training, development and consultation) to the St. John’s team aiding them to tell their story and reach a new range of students. Because of this when the team came to us to discuss the dream of a new website, where they could freely edit, add new policies, add great new images, whilst providing details to Ofsted we were keen to help.
Our first step was to create a formal brief and to have a better understanding of what the team wanted from the project, looking at measures of success and aspiration points during the build.
After an in-depth kick off meeting with the St. John’s board we were ready to make a start!
I have worked with Creative Blend on a professional level for a while now. They have developed our new website and done a great deal of good work for us as a charity. Grant Jennings is a highly-skilled and effective Creative Consultant and website-developer. He is extremely helpful and polite. He will come and work and train in-house where needed and always keeps to deadlines. Jason Danes has also done lots of good work for us, particularly with regards to imagery, graphics and ensuring content is crisp and clear…?
The Approach:
Sadly the previous website didn’t have any analytics setup, or prior user data from a quantitive or qualitative standpoint. Because of this we started the project with a mini website audit to better understand potential user behaviour whilst exploring their wider market place.
After plotting out the key project acceptance criteria and areas we believe would present worth while opportunities we got cracking with the initial stages of the website build starting with the sign off of a new website sitemap. This stage is of vital importance to guide not only the new content (copy) creation but also to provide us a ?home? point where we can reference through out the creation of the website.
Once signed off we then moved into the design & build phase where our code ninja Jason began to flex his skills to take the aspirations of St. John’s into some initial layouts for them to review.
With some great feedback from the St. John’s team we adapt the initial pages, provided a wider range of media types and moved into the development stages of the project. Through out we worked closely with the St. John’s team to tweak and advise on the newly created website content.
After a few rounds of design alterations, whilst adding new social feeds and policies the end was in sight! We presented the new website to the board in February 2020 where we were delighted to receive a ?green light? to launch.
Some highlights from the project:
- WordPress build working with some custom features to pull in new feeds and allow for ease of use
- Ability to add in new fundraising and donation methods
- Ofsted approval guidance adhered to through out
- Tested for accessibility prior to launch
- Technical SEO best practices included
- Integrated video through out
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