Case Study
Newmark Education - Website Project
A new website, a new platform, using a template but keep the original design and improve the user experience, train us to use it and get it done in three months.
THE CHALLENGE
What happens if you love the look of your website but don't particular care for the provider or the platform? You find a new provider and rebuild it.
You will only have 20 templates to chose from that aren't super customizable yet you still want the same design you had before, you want it built and deployed in 60-90 days and you need to learn the new software well enough so you can manage and maintain it after launch. You won't be 100% sure what you are getting, what the software is capable of or how to get the most out of it simply right out of the gate. In addition, the website served multiple audiences from current parents to school districts looking for placement (b2b) to teachers looking for specialized training programs offered by Newmark Education for professional development. Since the website typically handles multiple audiences this would also be a great time to tackle site structure to help improve user experience. and you want to take this opportunity to tackle reworking the content for better user experience? This was an ambitious projects and one that woulWith a new provider selected (Finalsite) the work could begin. Dreams of a more user friendly software, a bit more flexibility but without sacrificing the original look and feel. The catch.. you have 20 templates to choose from and templates are not very customizable.
We also had a short timeline. The current contract was coming up for renewal fast. Can this be done in 60 days or 90 days?
Finally, the website accommodates a variety of visitors and is not your traditional school website. If it's possible to improve the user experience, we would do that too. And at the end the team would be properly trained to maintain and take over administration of the new site.
Getting the right help
We had been working with Amy Renaud for six months already. She was recommended to us during our recent website launch. We had a difficult deployment and found ourselves in a position where we did not know what to do next. We only had to read Amy’s LinkedIn profile to know she would be the perfect fit. So we put her on retainer right away and brought her in as our website consultant/web administrator to work with our team.
Dianne Willoughby, Nueva School
THE SOLUTION
The first step was to tackle the privacy issue. Amy was able to demonstrate a way that would allow an archive to exist on the website but in a private area.
The next step was designing a newsletter that the parents would love. Since Amy had solved the privacy issue we were more open to her suggestions on shortening the content. Parents would now see a “summary” and a “read more” link instead of having to sift through content. That still left us with a lot of information.
To organize what was left Amy designed custom graphics that would help the parents quickly identify what content was important to them. The overall visual layout, usage of graphics/photos, and navigation were streamlined to simplify the look even further.
THE RESULT
Voila! A clean, easy to navigate parent newsletter that was private.
The praise poured in. We did not expect this level of reaction from our parents over a newsletter. Who knew that this would be so well received and that parents would be so incredibly appreciative of these changes. Parents were now able to quickly find what they were looking for, and they were excited to receive it.
Admins loved the new workflow. We ran through it a couple of times, made a tweak or two and very quickly had a solid, replicable workflow that was easy to train others how to use, leveraged the features of the software and took the admins considerably less time to execute.
A WORD FROM OUR CLIENT
Dianne Willoughby
Editorial Manager, Communications
"To Amy, our Finalsite Consultant - There is no way we could have made this happen without you, Amy. You are creative, tactical, responsive, and patient. You deserve all the recognition and celebration of this milestone which will truly change our parents’ experience of their weekly newsletter. It’s been my absolute honor to partner with you on this."
A WORD FROM THE PARENTS
We're successful if our client is successful. Here what their parents had to say about the new parent newsletter.
A night to remember. Fresh cheesecake, figs, and pinot noir.
I really like the first Nueva Notes of the school year. It's clean and simple. I can pick the topic I am interested to read..very user-friendly.
I like the overall new look/organization of the newsletter. I especially like the ALL and UPPER buttons being clearly visible.
I thought it was much better--I like this format! It's a big improvement!
I just went through Nueva Notes and LOVE the new format. So much easier to read through and love how concise it is. ..Thank you "Nueva Communications team" for revamping the Nueva Notes.