How to Design Educational Websites That Will Rock in 2022

The saying, “Nothing is permanent” is best fit for this modern digital age. Today’s evolution might go out-of-date tomorrow.  At this juncture your educational institution website should harness the benefits of new technologies. Yes, we’re talking about design educational websites. 

Website is imperative for seamless operation of an educational facility as students get to know about everything in details from enrolment to result. Keep in mind that your website is the foundation for your reputation in the digital world. 

This is why you need to follow our below tricks to make your education website design stand out.

1. Set Up Your Goals

Goal setting is a powerful process for defining your future. Planning an educational institute website design is just like any other design. You should set up your business objective crystal clear, define the target audience, and modify the site to achieve your goals.   

Let’s say, if you have plans to develop a website design for schools or institutions, you need to address the queries of both pupils and their parents. 

Incorporating bold and colourful elements with interactive content and simple navigation in order to appeal to both target groups.

2. Elaborate on Visuals

Choosing the right colour palette for a website is very crucial. And the education industry website is no exception. Make sure the colour of the website layout matches with the brand image. Usually e-learning platforms embrace neutral and convincing colours, let’s say blue, green and brown. 

If you have a brand book for your educational institution, make sure your website colours match the existing scheme to create a homogeneous brand image. 

For an e-learning platform, use neutral and convincing colors, for example blue, green, brown. 

Highlight essential edtech design elements, such as headers, footers, CTA buttons with other hues matching the color palette.

3. Add Content and Media Elements

A website can win its half battle with well-structured, consistent and meaningful content. A website comes to everyone’s notice when its appealing web design combines with powerful content. 

Further, a website looks more attractive and also makes the learning process simpler and easier with the use of media elements.  However, website design for physical institutions and digital learning platforms should differ in their form and content.

Features for University/School Website

An educational institution website should be designed in such a way that it can attract fresh students and also guide the existing ones. Some features you need to blend with your website to make it award winning. 

To ensure your school website gets a better conversion rate and numerous visitors who would stay longer, let’s have a look at the following website design ideas and features.

• University or school hierarch

The website must display the arrangement of faculties, courses and subjects in a proper way. Clearly depict each section such as heads of department, deans and teachers. You should facilitate your visitors to navigate through each section of the website comfortably.

• Online timetable

Timetable functionality is an awesome feature that one cannot deny. It controls many activities. Let’s say, a specific period when teachers/students can log in. It’s a matter of security enforcement into your system. When the varsity has multiple buildings or departments across the city, it is important to pin the studying locations to the map and give the right directions.

• Applicant info

Applicants come under your target audience. You need to add the dates of application and enrolment, including all the associated information. Encourage the visitors to subscribe to notifications on the enrolment flow.

• Live chat

The live chat feature integrated to your website boosts the user experience significantly and helps generate leads. Today Chatbots or voice interactions are talk of the town. That’s why you should consider having this feature to tap your potential audience better.

• Virtual tour

A virtual tour is a sequence of panoramic images that are combined together to create a digital experience of any location. Photos, videos, panoramas, or 3D tours help in student engagement and encourage prospective students, even before they step into the campus.

• Video

Real videos of your educational institutions found on your site would germinate different feelings in the viewers’ mind. Shooting videos with drones offer your website a new look. You can put the videos into the background of banners. You can also create a separate section for videos where students can watch them. It shows many things inside your institutions that can boost credibility of your institution.

• Customer-oriented CTAs

CTAs stand for call to actions. A CTA is a marketing term for any design to prompt a quick response or boost an immediate sale. A direct and clear CTA encourages the target visitors that result in growth in sales. A lot of institutions pay no regard to these features; this is why you have a real chance to stand out.

• Gamification

Gamification is the strategic attempt to motivate and engage users for a deeper experience. As per a survey report, well-designed gamification elements are acknowledged by around 85% of students. Further, these elements are not limited to a video game-like experience. They should care about the relatedness and anatomy of the learning process, and safeguard better learning outcomes.  

Considering gamification an element of education web design, it should be contextual and relevant to the user. There are four types of players such as achievers (40%), killers (20%), explorers (50%) and socializers (80%). After that they get combined with the learner types you have.

It helps select the most appropriate for your project gamification mechanics:

• Scores
• Levels
• Unlocks
• Ranks
• Progress bars
• Leader boards
• Course currency
• Badges and trophies
• Upgraded avatars

For example, group competition that needs teamwork to finish a task can provide the team extra internal currency, a real-life trophy, and reward points, among others. Yes, there is no boundary of your imagination.

Features for Online Learning Platforms

Online learning platforms create a new category that needs a different set of functionality meant for educational website design as they do not just represent some institutions, but also they are educational establishments themselves. 

That’s why more focus goes towards the media elements and learning content. Now check out a few deserving features to enrich the functionality of a website for a set of virtual courses.

• Audio/video streaming

Online webinars are a great medium to hold classes. The webinar enables students to ask questions and receive feedback in real-time. To get the facility, one must have audio, video streaming and text-typing functionalities.

• Interactive whiteboard

A workspace provides an interactive whiteboard to both students and teachers to type text, draw or upload pictures in real-time. You can even add a gamification element with it to the working process. The feature specially improves your collaboration. You need to know that the support of highlighter, eraser, text zoom in/out, and uploading pictures permits for better learning.

• Personal account

A personal account having a simple and safe login allows users to track the development, keep learning materials for future use and search friends to share results and make a communication within. In addition, make a decision on the monetization model your courses will have – paid or free. Paid programs always need payment system integration or in-app currency setup for hassle free transactions.

• Internal messaging system

Internal chat function is a great way to foster communication between students and teachers to solve all the problems found in learning. When you will have a community of teachers and students, you can even think of moving to a small social media platform within your educational website.  It will enhance the loyalty and increase the interest of avid learners.

• Mobile compatibility

It is seen that mobile learning products and services grew exponentially in recent years. You can attribute the credit to Covid pandemic. That’s why an educational website cannot impart seamless education without being responsive or a separate mobile app presenting some mobile-only features to grow the mobile audience and involve them in using both platforms.

Conclusion

Your ultimate goal of designing educational websites is to let the pupils access their important information and make communication with ease. However, you cannot meet the expectation without making the learning system smooth and user-friendly. The aforementioned points would definitely help you to make the right decision.