LEGACY TRADITIONAL SCHOOLS
Gilbert School Tells a Better Story with WordPress Website Redesign
Founded in 2007, Legacy Traditional Schools has quickly grown to become one of the leading charter schools in Arizona. The school’s “back-to-basics” approach to learning has struck a chord with parents, and has led to the opening of 15 new locations throughout Arizona and the southwest. As the school has grown, its leadership has become keenly aware of just how much today’s parents turn to the Internet to research decisions about their child’s education, and of just how effective digital marketing can be for growing enrollments. In 2017, Legacy Traditional Schools turned to Skyhook for help building a world-class web presence for its entire portfolio of schools.
Re-design goals
In re-designing its website network, Legacy Traditional Schools had three main goals:
- Give visitors a “feel” for the school, helping them to preview the experience their son/daughter would have at Legacy, and getting them to commit to a campus tour (and eventually to enrollment)
- Better communicate with parents of current students, freeing up staff to focus on student outcomes rather than the time time-consuming work of taking phone calls and repeatedly answering similar questions
- Provide a platform that would (a) allow Legacy to maintain brand consistency across the network of schools, each with its own content contributors and (b) provide the communications team with a tool from which they could launch marketing campaigns, including integration with email marketing automation software
How Skyhook helped
We started with a deep dive into the school’s brand. This included a campus tour, conversations with the executive team and other staff, the reviewing of student survey data, and researching competitor messaging. Based on this research, we began to produce a website strategy, which we continued to adjust and revise together with Legacy’s marketing team until it was perfect.
To solve the first problem, we focused heavily on the emotional components of the site: the headlines, the image selection, and the usability. We wanted parents to really feel what we hoped their kids would feel at school: included, loved, and empowered.
To solve the second problem, we analyzed the most trafficked pages of the current site, and spoke with staff members about the questions parents most frequently asked them. We then designed a sitemap and user flow that addressed the heaviest issues first, and created content that answered questions directly.
To solve the third problem, we extended standard WordPress functionality to include a variety of marketing support tools, including a robust content editing system, deep integration with Infusionsoft (Legacy’s MAT tool of choice), and advanced search optimization tools. Perhaps most impressively, we built a robust “cascading content” network, which allowed Legacy to specify “master” content, and have that content displayed on all network sites unless otherwise specified by a local site. This allowed Legacy to make “network-level” changes to certain kinds of content without overwriting changes made by local administrators, and it allowed local administrators to have a starting point for their content until such time they could make it truly “theirs.”
The Results
As a result of our engagement, Legacy ended up with a beautiful new website that blew their previous presence out of the water. We received a delightful amount of positive feedback from staff and parents alike. The communications team was thrilled at the new tools they had at their disposal, and most importantly, conversions on the site increased 23%, and time-consuming school-parent communication events were reduced by over 40%.
“When I look at our website, I feel proud of our school and the good and important work we’re doing in our community. The website seems to perfectly capture what we’re all about”
