School Website Design for UK Schools and Trusts
We only create personalised websites tailored to your school. We don’t provide templates or out of the box layouts, and everything is designed just for you. Twenty years of designing school websites, for primaries, secondaries, sixth forms and academy trusts across the UK.
Your design, your brand, and a full refresh every three years at no extra cost.
What makes a good school website design
Schools ask us this constantly, usually while looking at three competing quotes. After twenty years, these are the things that separate a school website that works from one that just looks nice on launch day.
It answers the question fast
Most visitors arrive wanting one thing. Term dates, uniform, an absence number, admissions. A good design gets them there in a click or two rather than making them hunt through a menu.
It shows the real school
Stock photography fools nobody. Real photography of your pupils, staff and buildings does more for admissions than any amount of prospectus copy, and video does more again.
It survives being updated
Designs that only look good when perfectly curated fall apart by half term. We design for the content you will realistically have, not the content in the mockup.
It works on a phone
Most of your parent traffic is on a mobile, often standing up and in a hurry. If the design was drawn for a desktop and squeezed down afterwards, they will feel it.
It is accessible
Colour contrast, text size, keyboard navigation and screen reader support are not extras. Some of your families depend on them, and they are part of your public sector equality duty.
It has room for what you must publish
Statutory information is often bolted on at the end and buried. We plan it into the structure at the start so it is easy to find and easy to keep current.
School website designs we have built
Live sites, not mockups. Look at how different they are from one another. That is the point of designing each one for the school it belongs to.
Heartlands High School
Clean and modern with a strong complementary colour palette. Heartlands carry a lot of information and the design holds all of it without feeling heavy.
All Saints Anfield
Strong colour and high quality photography doing most of the work. Proof that a primary school website doesn’t have to be pastel to feel welcoming.
Search Education Trust
A trust that wanted its website to lift the whole brand rather than just describe it. Animation carries visitors through the trust’s story.
Hebburn Lakes
Drone footage on the homepage against a soft palette. Five seconds of video of the real school and grounds does more than three paragraphs of copy.
We design for your school, not from a template
Some providers give you a theme with your logo dropped into the corner and your colours applied. It is quick and it is cheap, and it is why so many school websites in the same county look like siblings.
We start from your school instead. Your intake, your setting, what makes families choose you, and what you are trying to say. Then we design something that belongs to you. Two schools have never had the same site from us.
You see the design before anyone builds anything
After the first meeting we take your vision and put together a design portfolio and a branding document. That is a proper look at how the site will work, not a sketch.
Then we go through whatever you want changed and keep iterating until you are happy. Nothing gets built until the design is signed off, which is what stops projects going sideways three weeks before an open evening.
Accessible by design, not as an afterthought
Schools have a public sector equality duty, and a fair number of your families rely on assistive technology to read your site. Retrofitting accessibility onto a finished design is expensive and usually half done.
We handle it while designing. Colour contrast that passes, text that scales, navigation that works from a keyboard, proper heading structure, alt text on images, and forms that a screen reader can complete.
Your design doesn’t have to age
The usual pattern is that a school website looks current for two years, tired by year four, and embarrassing by the time the contract is up. Then the school goes out to tender because a redesign costs as much as a new site.
Every school with us gets a full design refresh every three years, included. You can also change your colours, imagery and branding yourself whenever you want, so a rebrand or a new head doesn’t mean starting again.
How the design process works
Five stages from first conversation to going live. Most school website projects take about a term.
Initial meeting
We talk about what you want the website to achieve, both in how it looks and what it does, and who you are trying to reach.
Design presentation
We create a design portfolio and branding document, then work through your changes until you are happy with it.
Development
We turn the agreed design into a working site and give you a link so you can watch it take shape and ask for changes.
Content transfer
We move your content across and tidy up how it is presented as we go. We can help you write new content where it is needed.
Training and go live
We train your team, then launch. Support and training carry on afterwards for as long as you are with us.
Still under contract somewhere else?
This is one of the most common conversations we have, and it is easier to solve than most schools expect.
We work back from your end date
Tell us when your current contract finishes and we build the schedule backwards from it, so the new site is ready to go live the day you are free.
All the work happens beforehand
Design, build and content migration can all be done while you are still with your current provider. Nothing goes live until you say so.
We move your content for you
Getting content out of an old system is the part schools dread. It is included in your price, and we tidy up the presentation as we move it.
Twenty years of working with schools
Realsmart recently supported our Trust in the redesign of 4 school websites and a Trust website. I found the team to be enormously patient in supporting me to achieve what we wanted with the sites, and highly responsive to queries, it seemed that nothing was too much trouble. It also felt like the team had a real appreciation for our budget constraints, I am convinced that working with them delivered excellent value for money for both the schools and for the Trust. I would highly recommend them as a partner.
We have worked with Realsmart for over ten years and are currently working with the web development team to refresh all of our school websites. I could not recommend the team enough. They are friendly and approachable and at the same time very skilled and extremely professional with their work. Their customer service is exemplary and second to none and they completely understand the school sector and what is important to schools.
Design is in the price, not on top of it
A lot of what schools get charged for separately is design work. Changing a template, adding a page type, applying a rebrand. Here is what your subscription covers.
- A design created for your school, never a template
- A design portfolio and branding document before build
- As many rounds of changes as it takes to get it right
- A full design refresh every three years
- Hosting on AWS with Cloudflare protection
- Free, unlimited support and training
- Every feature we build, now and in future
- Content migration from your existing website
What we don’t charge extra for
- Changing your colours, logo or branding
- Adding a new page, section or template
- Getting your own content back if you leave
- Support tickets, however many you raise
School website design FAQs
Do you use templates for school websites?
No. We only create personalised websites tailored to your needs, we don’t provide templates or out of the box layouts. Everything is designed just for you, which is why no two schools we work with have the same site.
How long does a school website design take?
Most projects take about a term from the first meeting to going live. The design stage itself is usually a few weeks, depending on how quickly decisions can be signed off. If you have a fixed date such as an open evening, tell us and we will build the schedule around it.
Can we see the design before you build it?
Yes, always. After the first meeting we produce a design portfolio and a branding document, and we work through your changes until you are happy. Nothing is built until you have signed the design off.
Can we change the design ourselves afterwards?
Yes. Colours, imagery and branding are all yours to change whenever you want. On top of that we refresh the whole design every three years at no extra cost, so your site doesn’t slowly date.
Are your school website designs accessible?
Yes, and we build accessibility in during design rather than adding it afterwards. That covers colour contrast, scalable text, keyboard navigation, proper heading structure, alt text and forms that work with a screen reader.
Will the design work on phones and tablets?
Yes. Most parent traffic arrives on a mobile, so we design for mobile first and test across devices before launch rather than shrinking a desktop layout down.
Do we need our own photography?
It helps enormously. Real photography of your pupils, staff and buildings does more for admissions than stock images ever will, and video does more again. If you don’t have anything usable yet, we will design around what you do have and tell you what would be worth commissioning.
Can you match our existing brand guidelines?
Yes. If you have brand guidelines we work within them, and if you are part of a trust we can hold the trust identity across every academy site while letting each school keep its own character. If you don’t have guidelines, the branding document we produce becomes a useful starting point.
How much does school website design cost?
Design is part of a single annual subscription rather than a separate fee, and that subscription also covers build, hosting, support, training, every feature and the three yearly refresh. Get in touch and we will give you the figure for your school without a sales process.
Who owns the design and the content?
You do. The site is built on WordPress with a standard export, so your content is portable, and we don’t charge you to take it. We would rather you stayed because you want to.
More on school websites
More on how we approach school website design.
Our favourite website designs for schools
Designs our team like, and what makes each of them work.
Designing a school website: our essential guide
What to think about before you start, from structure to photography.
Redesigning an old school website makes a difference
What changed for one school after we replaced a site that had dated.
Let’s design your school website
Book a free demo with no obligation. We will show you designs we have created for schools like yours, walk you through the content management system, and give you a straight answer on cost.