The Future Of School Website Design
At Interactive Schools, our ethos revolves around crafting unparalleled websites for world-leading schools. Placing users at the forefront of our design process, we specialise in curating immersive experiences that seamlessly blend creative innovation, measurable engagement, and tangible impact. Our mission is to transform school websites into dynamic portals, offering a lens into the vibrant essence of your institution.
We understand that in order to stay at the cutting edge of School Website Design and to continue to provide dynamic and engaging experiences, it is essential to monitor the ever-changing marketing and technological landscape. Whilst we don’t have access to a crystal ball that will show exactly what the future of school website design looks like, with the current rapidly evolving high-tech advancements we are seeing, we are able to anticipate what this could look like.
Audience Demand For Instant Gratification
One of the biggest indicators of a future shift in school website design is the increasing audience desire for instant gratification in all aspects of life, more noticeably however, in the media we consume. Take the rise of TikTok for example, over 1 billion users head to the platform on a monthly basis, seeking to be instantaneously hooked by short, and entertaining videos. With statistics showing that between 21 and 34 seconds is the ideal length of a video in order to maximise views, it’s clear that users are craving short and snappy fulfilment.
So, how is this relevant to the future of your school website? Well, with our attention spans seemingly dwindling, it’ll become even more important to fight for the audience's attention with captivating visual content and provide written content that effectively tells your unique #SchoolStory in a captivating yet succinct manner. In line with these predictions, our creative process is designed to instantly portray your school’s personality in the most visually appealing style. We also predict that, unlike the 50-page sitemaps you often see on school websites now, sitemaps may be simplified to just a Homepage and Admissions page, providing users with instant answers to their questions.
The Rise Of Virtual Reality
In response to this change in audience behaviour, tech wizards continue to explore what can be done to make the user experience as smooth as possible. One area that has the potential to transform how we view school websites is Virtual Reality. There are currently many different devices on the market that offer virtual reality experiences, such as the Apple Vision Pro, the Meta Quest devices and the Playstation VR2. Currently, these devices are considerably pricey and are quite bulky, making them quite difficult to carry with you in your everyday life, meaning that they aren’t yet a standard household device. However, much like the evolution of mobile phones, it’s likely that both the costly and the cumbersome nature of these devices will decrease. This means that perhaps when designing websites in the future, we will be more focused on how your school website can look as an immersive virtual experience, rather than how it looks on a phone or laptop screen.
Here at Interactive Schools, we are already delving into the exciting world of virtual reality with our SprX 360 Virtual Tours, which are designed specifically to be viewed via our SprXVR headset. With the use of a smartphone and our VR headset, irrespective of where your users are in the world, they can be physically immersed in your school campus. With the ability to gamify with quizzes and virtual easter eggs, users will be captivated as they travel around your campus engaging with prompts, questions, and pop-outs, rather than aimlessly scrolling. For more information on our SprXVR virtual tours, please reach out to wow@interactiveschools.com who will be more than happy to discuss how we can design the best Virtual Reality tour to suit your school.
The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence
Beyond the realm of VR, and with screens continuing to seemingly pop up all around us, the many ways in which artificial intelligence can be utilised to make the user experience even more effortless are also on the rise. Most Social Media platforms, apps and websites already have an embedded AI chatbot. While the current level of AI technology means these chatbots often appear void of emotion, hopefully as technology advances, you will be able to manipulate the chatbot into adopting your school’s tone of voice and ethos. The same goes for AI avatars: whilst they presently appear overly robotic and a tad disconcerting, wouldn’t it be cool if users were to receive a personalised introduction from a realistic-looking avatar of your headteacher when reaching your page? AI may also have the power to direct you to a specific place on the website based on your search history. Say that you had recently been searching for nurseries, for example upon clicking on a school page, you could be instantly transported to the nursery admission page, or the nursery area on a virtual tour, leading you instantly to the satisfaction of your curiosity. There may even be an audio intelligence similar to Siri embedded across school websites, meaning without even lifting a finger, you could be directed to a relevant area of a school website upon verbal command.
Not only will the technological advancements in AI change the user experience of school websites, but also how we create them. Even with the current level of chatbot technology seen in the form of ChatGPT, users have the capability to use AI to help improve the structure and stylistic language we use for the written content of our websites, with users of our new SprXCMS already having the luxury of an embedded ChatGPT Content Helper. With the current quality of the output of Artificial Intelligence, we shouldn’t solely rely on chatbots to write the content for us. The great thing about AI is that the more it is used, the more accurate its responses become in regards to adopting your school’s tone of voice and brand identity, meaning that in the future, we may not even need to write our own content.
Whilst it can often be overwhelming trying to comprehend just how technology will transform the way we market schools, it’s important to remember that although how and where your school stories are told may change, your storytelling ‘why’ will remain the same. By continuing to focus on emotions and experiences that resonate with key stakeholders and by simply showcasing your commitment to helping your school community thrive, however, and wherever your story is told, your school’s unique charm will continue to shine through.