Build the website, prospectus and visuals that honour the quality of your school
Website Design and Development
The website was built for an earlier version of the school. The path from homepage to tour booking takes too many clicks. Families drop off before they get where they need to go.
- 01 Discovery and strategy
We work with your team to define the information architecture, user experience, and broad strategic and creative vision for the website.
- 02 Design
We design a beautiful, custom website for your school. Adhering to best-practice accessibility, SEO, responsive design and modern UX principles. We explore unique features that set you apart.
- 03 Development
We develop your site using an extendable architecture, built on WordPress. This means that your website can be extended, reviewed, and built on top of by Bolsta, your school, or a future developer. We don't believe in locking you in by using proprietary software or development stacks.
- 04 Copywriting
We take the load off content creation by guiding as little or as much of the copywriting process as you need.
- 05 Launch and handover
We liaise directly with your wider team to ensure a smooth, safe, and secure launch and handover.
Prospectus
The prospectus reads as a list of features and facts. Families put it down after the tour and forget about it. It does not carry the school's story or give families a reason to come back to it.
- 01 Discovery and copywriting
We run a discovery process using our Prospectus Design Canvas. Copywriting is handled as part of the engagement, drawing on your existing brand and story foundation.
- 02 Design and production
The piece is designed to carry your school's story in a form families want to hold onto, pass around, and come back to. Print and digital versions are produced together.
- 03 Delivery
You receive a finished prospectus ready for tours, events, and enrolment conversations. Print production is handled through trusted suppliers.
Visual & Campaign Identity
You have different logo versions, colour usage is like the wild west, and design is dated - certainly not reflective of the quality, professionalism and growth of your school.
- 01 Stakeholder engagement
We have run many brand and visual identity projects with schools, and know how to navigate the patient work of bringing board, alumni, leadership and school community on the journey. Through careful stakeholder engagement, we build a specific scope for your school's unique context.
- 02 Design exploration
We explore and design your new visual identity to be in more direct alignment to the story, experience, culture and values of your school. At the same time, we bring modern brand-thinking to the table, giving you a top-of-class suite of brand assets to help communicate your school to the world. That means more than a logo: Patterning, graphic elements, detailed colour pairings, are all part of the equation.
- 03 Refinement
We re-engage your community around the proposed changes. We see ourselves as a partner in this process. As refinements and feedback is provided, we look for 'third-way' solutions that retain quality and satisfy the vision of the community.
- 04 Handover
You receive a full brand suite, fully documented and ready to use. If required, we can support you in the communication and planning for the initial launch of the new visual identity.
- 05 Rollout
We plan, scope, and manage the rollout of your new visual identity shoulder-to-shoulder with your team. Rollout is a significant undertaking, so we bring our school experience and various templates and checklists to the table to ensure nothing gets forgotten, and the rollout is sustainably managed.
Custom scopes
We regularly work with schools on custom scopes, unique to their particular situation.
- 01 Microsites and campaign sites
- 02 Digital experiences (interactive prospectus, lead-magnet-style sites, tour landing pages)
- 03 Photography and videography
- 04 Brand campaigns (open day, scholarships, anniversaries)
- 05 Print collateral (annual reports, fundraising materials, event programs)
What schools say
“The College has grown 30+ percent in enrolments since we engaged Jacob, and whilst there are a multitude of reasons for enrolment growth in schools, having a clear messaging base and support structures in place has definitely supported the growth projections.”
David Gray Director of Mission & Community Belmont Christian College
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes a Bolsta website different?
Two things. First, the standard. The craft is high, with story-led copy, design and development directed as a single process rather than passed between separate teams. Second, and it matters more, how it is to work with us. A typical agency runs you through a set process, which is fine when you want a known outcome, but schools are complex, and complexity is where set processes tend to struggle. Ours is built for schools, so there are far fewer surprises. We also take bringing your community along seriously, with more listening and UX research than you might expect, and we orchestrate whatever the outcome needs, from photography to videography. For a school without much in-house capacity, it’s about as close as you’ll get to an internal team, in the shape of an external partner.
Do we need story or brand work first?
It helps, though it isn’t strictly required. Schools that have done a Messaging Workshop or Story Strategy arrive knowing what they want to say, which makes the creative work faster and surer. If you haven’t, we can scope a story foundation into the engagement, so we’re not designing on top of a message that isn’t clear yet.
How long does a website take?
Usually six to nine months, start to finish. We direct design, copywriting and development as a single integrated process, and the timeline moves with the size, complexity and content scope of the site. We’ll give you a clearer range once we understand what your site needs to do.