Zone 1 of Exhibit 2 is the public facing zone of the website and includes the school's image and message.

Branding

Detailed discussion on branding for schools is a subject in its own right. It is mentioned here, as more often than not, schools websites look and feel do not correspond with their hard copy counterparts. It is not unusual to see different logos, color schemes, and fonts for each medium. It is important to coordinate these in a uniform manner to leverage the school brand. To do otherwise dilutes the image.

Information Architecture

From prospective applicants interested in knowing about the school and its admissions process, to a student needing a homework assignment via the school intranet site, the secret to a positive user experience relies primarily on two factors:

• The availability of the relevant content on the site.
• The intuitiveness and ease of navigation on the site to relevant content.

At all times users need to know where they are, where they can go, and how to get back to the home page with one click. Key to achieving this is careful and thoughtfully crafted navigation, together with arrangement of information (known as information architecture or "IA") by an information architect. It is often easier to achieve optimal IA by starting fresh rather than modifying an existing website, but a skilled information architect should be able to do well with the elements provided.

Website Content - Home Page

Most home pages have attractive pictures of school facilities and students, and left hand or horizontal navigation bars. Some provide the current date, news, announcements of upcoming events, a calendar, and a search function in some combination. Navigation bars contain some or all of the following topics:

About (School): This section typically contains a short history, the school mission, a message from the head of the school, and an invitation or pointer to take a virtual tour of the school, or to schedule a visit. School literature may be available online for downloading, or the user may be invited to phone or email for copies. Directions and maps may also be available.

Admissions: Some schools imbed this in the About section, but given its importance, and especially as financial assistance is discussed as part of the admissions process, the best practice is Admissions as its own section. Especially so the bigger the school with multiple entry points: kindergarten, lower school, middle school, and upper school, each having separate admissions officers, criteria, and contact information. Schools offer the various application forms in PDF format available for viewing and downloading. College applications are routinely submitted online, and the technology is easy enough for schools to allow applicants the alternative of submitting applications on-line.

Academic, Athletic, Extra-curricular Activities: Clubs, student publications (newspaper, yearbook), performing arts etc. are presented, either together, in their own sections, or by school level. Depending on the number of levels at each school (kindergarten, lower school, middle school, upper school), this content can be subdivided and presented in a variety of ways (see section on Portals). Library, guidance, bookstore and other school resources are often included in this section. As an information delivery system, the school website excels in delivering this type of up-to-date information to its audience.

College Office: Some schools embed this content in other sections such as About, but it deserves its own section. It is the logical destination for various users including:

• Prospective applicants viewing the range of colleges that graduates attend.
• College admissions officers viewing available dates to schedule visits.
• Juniors and seniors viewing visiting college schedules and other relevant information and communication.

Calendars: Calendars announcing school events, key dates, academic and sports schedules, are routine and expected elements. Calendars offer a great opportunity to provide high value content to stakeholders. The number and placement of calendars vary with size of school and offerings and relate logically to the site architecture. Smart use of calendars is a relatively easy opportunity to score high user satisfaction.

Community: Faculty, students, administration, parents and alumni have been the traditional components of this section. Some schools embed this content appropriately in the About section. A useful benchmark is the larger the school and the more dynamic the website, the greater is the case for having a separate section.

Alumni/Development: Frequently, schools combine these elements in the same section, both to encourage contact with alumni and facilitate fundraising efforts.

Portals

A portal serves as a starting page, similar to a Home page through which a user accesses other websites (examples: Yahoo, Excite, MSN, AOL, etc.). The portal concept can facilitate the information architecture of a site by identifying home pages of various school groupings and stakeholders. The larger the school, quantity of offerings, and usage of the website, the greater is the case for considering portal architecture for the site.

Example: A school of several hundred students and a program from kindergarten through upper school, with a multitude of extra-curricular activities, athletic and arts programs, etc., could have as its home page a portal page designed as follows:

A visitor to this page has the school's entire offerings and navigational options available in one location. The visitor can browse by school division, school function or activity. To illustrate this architecture we have assumed three separate prospective parent browse scenarios for admissions and financial aid information:

Browse Scenario # 1: Prospective parent wants admissions information immediately and selects Admissions & Financial Aid from the left-hand navigation bar, as in Exhibit 4.

After clicking on Admissions & Financial Aid, content on the next page will show information for all four divisions per Exhibit 5.

In browse scenario #2 a prospective parent of a Nursery School age child clicks on the Nursery School Option per Exhibit 6. This will take the visitor to the Nursery division home page per Exhibit 7.

All information on this page and section is context sensitive for the Nursery division. Hence a click on Admissions & Financial Aid from this page provides relevant information for the Nursery division only.

In browse scenario #3 the visitor to the school home page is the parent of an upper schooler. This parent selects Upper School per Exhibit 8.

As with the Nursery School home page, all information is context sensitive.

Features and Benefits to A Portal Approach

The school home page will at once and unmistakably showcase the breadth of the school's offerings:

• Each of the four divisions will have its own home page, tailored and designed to showcase its message and offerings, within the school's general look and feel.
• Visitors to the school home page (Exhibit 3) can search via the left-hand navigation bar, by division per the top horizontal navigation bar, and/or by specific topic listed alphabetically in the center of the page:
• Most information is available within one or two clicks.
• Content is readily available and reachable by multiple routes a user would deem intuitive.
• Page content and graphics will be easily updateable by page owners (webmaster, faculty, administration, students, parents).