Lincoln Community School

A mobile-first redesign

The new LCS website design successfully addressed the school’s key communication goals without exceeding budget requirements. The school leveraged Finalsite’s ability to tailor one of its popular themes to meet its branding as well as strategic goals.

 

LCS chose a Finalsite Theme Plus design and added some customizations to create a design that enabled them to showcase their school to drive enrollment and engagement.

“The theme we chose worked really well for our communication goals and it looked great on mobile devices, and at the same time fit our budget and timeline criteria,” Cynthia said.

Content Strategy for Mobile

LCS first partnered with Finalsite in 2010, but since then, the needs of their community changed — primarily on the mobile front. Mobile-first design is critical in Western Africa. In Ghana, due to the lack of internet reliability at home, school community members rely heavily on their mobile devices.

LCS’s prior website was not responsive, and with parents primarily accessing the website and reading the weekly newsletter on their mobile devices, it was mandatory for the website to be restructured and redesigned.

Kwame, who worked on much of the actual website content, said, “we realized people are reading less and less, so images and videos were more important when we started mapping out our new site. We wanted a clean, simple and straightforward content along with photographs that really showcased our mission and the diversity of our community.” 

The school's photographer was given clear instructions on the types of photos to capture in order to fit with the theme, style and messaging of the new website.

Redesign Highlights

The vibrant site colors, stunning photography, up-to-date news, social media feeds, and interactive elements engage visitors from the moment they land on the site. The homepage is bolstered by an attractive footer showcasing Kente, a silk and cotton fabric native to West Ghana, adding a subtle but powerful reminder of the school’s location and rich heritage.

Finalsite’s Content Management System, Composer, is robust and allows for flexible page layouts, embedded elements, flexible navigation and other tools which Kwame took advantage of while using his creativity to reuse custom content elements throughout the site while also adding unique elements as well.

Highlights include: Wordart to showcase what advancement means to LCS, social media mashup, pages to keep parents engaged, and other embedded elements, including a college matriculation banner, YouTube videos, and livestreaming events.

 

Recommendations for Success

“We had ample time to work through our project and had some extra time to polish it off a bit further before launching in May,” Cynthia said.

Cynthia also stressed that securing the financing was the first step and was pleased that Finalsite worked with the school to meet their budgeting requirements while at the same time meeting their marketing and communication goals. Other key elements were hiring their webmaster, Kwame, who possessed a wealth of knowledge and ample experience that helped him to execute on the strategy she and her team envisioned.

“I also cannot state enough how important the Website Redesign Playbook was as it gave us a good overview while guiding us along and helped make the redesign manageable while at the same time warning us on what to watch out for," Cynthia said. "Feedback has been extremely positive as the website is much easier to use, content is easier to digest, there are more photos and the site is just all around a big improvement.”

The Work Never Ends

As a member of the Association of International Schools in Africa (AISA), LCS was provided resources from 9ine, a data protection, cyber security and safeguarding consulting firm who provided schools with GDPR School Readiness Resources. Even though Ghana is thousands of kilometers away from Europe, Ghana law follows EU Law so they too must be compliant with the EU Global Data Protection Laws. LCS continues to look at their data processes as well as the use of photographs on the website to remain compliant with all data protection laws. 

Conclusion

Cynthia offered this advice to other schools who were contemplating a redesign: “We were well prepared having read the hugely informative Website Redesign Playbook. We also performed surveys and carefully budgeted this project before taking the step forward to redesign. Additionally, we had a fantastic Finalsite Project Manager who listened to what we wanted, helped with our priorities and guided us on best practices.  We looked forward to our weekly calls with her and are so pleased with the results.”