Quick, independent school administrator: Who is the primary audience for your website?
If you answered, "Why, parents, of course," you'd be correct. A key competitive advantage for reaching parents is a new website, which can connect current parents to your school and get prospective families -- including both parents and students -- intrigued by your school's mission.
For Benedictine High School of Richmond, Va., the response to their new Magic Hour-designed website has been glowing.
"The updated website is definitely more fun, useful and user-friendly," said Benedictine parent Cindy Ortiz. "The homepage's picture is eye-catching. Having the calendar and news on the homepage is very helpful, too, since those are the things that help me to stay in touch with what's going on at the school on a daily basis."
She added, "The information seems to be better categorized and detailed now, too. It's nice to see pictures throughout the site as well as messages from the different faculty/directors/coaches under each section. Great job with the website!"
The site also does a great job of communicating the school's mission: to "form Cadets as Christian men of conscience, discipline, and achievement." Benedictine monks from North Carolina's Belmont Abbey founded the private military high school in 1911. Today, it continues the military school model to deliver a college preparatory education for young men in grades 9 through 12.
For Brian Hutchins, Benedictine's Director of Technology who managed the new website development, the results on the administrative end have been stellar as well.
"I am very pleased with the broad functionality of the website, as well as its ease of use," said Hutchins. "Compared to the old system we have much more available to use. We have already used the site to highlight our school using new social media, video, and photography options unavailable to us before. For example, we try to embed YouTube videos into every news article we post, something unavailable in the past."
He continued, "The training we received prior to launch was thorough and prepared us to hit the ground running," Hutchins added. "Overall I am pleased with Magic Hour and its excellent capabilities -- which I know we haven't even used half of -- as well as the speedy and knowledgeable support."
Visit www.benedictinehighschool.org to see the new website. You can also check out their social media channels here: www.facebook.com/bhsrva, www.twitter.com/bhsrva, www.flickr.com/photos/bhsrva, and www.youtube.com/user/bhsrva.