Back to School – St Ives Launches Updated Website

St Ives pupils are going places and so is their website!

St Ives is a private preparatory school for girls aged 2 to 11 and boys aged 2 to 7 in Haslemere, Surrey and we have been privileged to work with them for a number of years, developing a range of promotional collateral, prospectus’, stationery and promotional materials, largely for advertising in print, digital and outdoor/large formats.

However, in mid-2016 we were invited to begin work with the school, in a much more involved capacity, on the development and implementation of a new strategic marketing plan. A central element of the plan was focused on the school’s digital presence. In addition to planning and implementing a comprehensive social campaign as well as the development of a content rich blog and article schedule we worked with the school and United Learning (St Ives is part of the United Learning Group of schools) to address Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), content, visitor journey and accessibility on the existing St Ives website.

Whilst it was decided that the site would not be redesigned, we were able to make significant structural changes to it to improve and add depth to content, enhance the visitor journey through the site and develop the detail and accessibility of information covering a range of existing pages and new topics. Our remit included a full review and edit of current text as well as copywriting content for new pages. Additionally, we also worked on revising and updating imagery across the site to bring in line with the updated style and positioning of the offline school collateral.

Early November 2016 saw St Ives announce its intention to change from a single sex girls school to become a co-ed school, welcoming girls aged 2 to 11 and boys aged 2 to 7. This exciting development, of course, meant that the website needed to be adjusted to accommodate new, relevant information. During November and early December, we worked to re-revise the content and adjust/add to the site structure to reflect the new co-ed offering, updating imagery where necessary and re-position the school as a co-ed centre of education excellence in Surrey.

The site was launched in mid-December 2016 and, to date has seen some promising uplift in analytics figures that show positive and encouraging interaction and conversion via the site.

Headmistress Kay Goldsworthy commented following the launch of the site,

“We are delighted with the strategic marketing work carried out by Mzuri to date. As a result we have seen a number of positive changes, not least an increased volume of good quality traffic to our website.”

You can take a look at the new St Ives website here.