Programs grow, priorities shift, families expect more, and communication habits change. Schools evolve quickly, but school websites have a way of getting stuck in old patterns: a homepage that once felt fresh, navigation that made sense years ago, and cringeworthy content that only shows how the school used to talk about itself.

Sometimes the signs are obvious, like when your site looks dated, frustrates families, or takes too many steps to update. Other times, the problem is harder to spot. 

Your website may look “fine,” but is it helping prospective families take the next step?

• Are current families finding what they need?
• Is your team able to keep content accurate without extra stress?

That’s why a school website redesign should start with an honest question: Is your website still doing its job? If the answer is unclear, these six signs can help you decide whether it’s time for a refresh.

What’s Involved in a School Website Redesign Project?

A school website redesign is the process of improving your website’s strategy, structure, content, and design. It’s a chance to rethink how to design your school's website with its accessibility, mobile experience, and content management system in mind , so visitors can find what they need quickly and your team can keep information accurate.

For school marketers, a redesign is also a chance to ask bigger questions:

• Does our website reflect who we are today?
• Can prospective families understand our values quickly?
• Can current families find calendars, forms, directories, news, and alerts without frustration?
• Can our team update content without relying on a developer?
• Are we protecting search visibility as pages move, merge, or improve?
• Is the experience accessible, mobile-friendly, and easy to use?

Launching a new site for your school is an opportunity to turn your school website into a trusted hub for information, connection, and action.

6 Signs It’s Time for a School Website Redesign

1. Your website no longer supports the full family experience

Your website serves many audiences: prospective families, current families, students, staff, alumni, donors, job seekers, and community members. But if your site is built mostly around your internal departments instead of your visitors’ needs, families may struggle to find the information that matters most to them.

A modern school website should help visitors move easily through big moments, such as:

• Learning what makes your school different
• Exploring academics, programs, athletics, arts, student life, and support services
• Understanding admissions, enrollment, registration, tuition, or financial aid
• Finding events, open houses, tours, or information sessions
• Accessing calendars, lunch menus, transportation details, handbooks, forms, and directories
• Reading timely news, announcements, and stories
• Connecting with alumni, giving, advancement, or community resources

This doesn’t mean every page or section needs to live on your homepage. It means your website needs clear pathways for the people using it.

A prospective family may need a “Why Our School?” page, a strong programs section, tuition or registration information, and a clear next step. A current parent may need quick access to calendars, portals, alerts, directories, forms, and news. Alumni and donors may need giving pages, event information, class notes, and publications.

If those journeys are scattered, buried, outdated, or inconsistent, your website stops building trust. A redesign can help you create a more organized, useful, and connected experience for every audience.

“We wanted a website with a modern, sleek, and user-friendly look that better portrays the spirit of our school, our educational philosophy, and the achievements of our students,” shared Fanny Chan, director of advancement at the International School of Brussels.

“The goal of this new website is to introduce our refreshed brand assets and enhance the overall family digital experience.” Its new, award-winning design went on to see a 76% an iIncrease in new website visitors. “Overall, the journey was amazing,” Franny said. “Seeing the website bring our new brand elements to life makes us incredibly proud of what we have achieved so far.”

2. Your website is responsive, but not mobile-first

A responsive website adjusts to different screen sizes, but a mobile-first website is planned, written, designed, and tested with mobile users in mind from the very start.

More than half of web traffic (about 54%) is coming from mobile and tablet devices, meaning families are often searching your website between meetings, in the carpool line, at a game, or late at night from a phone. They’re not patiently pinching, zooming, and digging through long pages to find the lunch menu, application deadline, event time, or faculty email they need.

A mobile-first school website should make it easy to:

• Scan pages quickly
• Use menus with one hand
• Complete forms on a phone
• Read the text without zooming
• Tap buttons and links without frustration
• Load images and videos quickly
• Find calendars, directories, portals, and alerts
• Move between high-priority pages with minimal effort

Mobile also matters for search and SEO. Google primarily uses the mobile version of a site’s content for indexing and ranking, so schools should make sure mobile pages include the same important content, metadata, structured data, and functionality as desktop pages.

Performance should be part of the redesign conversation, too. Core Web Vitals focus on loading, interactivity, and visual stability, all of which affect how smooth and usable a page feels.

3. Your design or brand story feels outdated

Your website is often the most visible expression of your school’s brand. If your visual identity, photography, messaging, or page layouts no longer represent your school, visitors will notice.

Signs your design may be due for a refresh include:

• Outdated logos, colors, fonts, or brand elements
• Text-heavy pages with little visual storytelling
• Too many PDFs, where web pages would work better
• Old photography or inconsistent image quality
• Buried program pages that do not show what makes your school distinct
• Overly deep navigation
• Pages that feel patched together instead of intentionally designed
• A homepage that does not quickly answer “Why this school?”

This is especially important if your school has recently completed a rebrand, updated its mission language, changed enrollment priorities, or shifted how it communicates with families.

A redesign helps bring your story into focus. Strong photography, clear messaging, accessible design, video, infographics, testimonials, news, and program pages can all work together to help families understand what makes your school worth considering and, hopefully, choosing.

4. Your website is difficult to navigate

Poor navigation creates issues for everyone. Prospective families leave before they inquire. Current parents call or email because they can’t find basic information, and staff members create duplicate pages or upload more PDFs because they are not sure where the content belongs.

Your school website navigation should be simple, intuitive, mobile-friendly, and built around the questions visitors actually have.

This means looking closely at:

• Main navigation labels
• Audience pathways
• Search behavior
• Top entrance and exit pages
• High-traffic pages
• Pages with low engagement
• Forms and conversion paths
• Common questions sent to admissions, communications, or the front office

Good navigation creates action.

To help bridge the gap between internal language and intuitive user experience, the Francis Parker School team baked storytelling elements right into the navigation. On desktop, the mega menus included short descriptions, giving context to sections like “Community” and “Progressive Education.”

And on mobile — where 75% of first-time users visited — the design emphasized repetition and location. “We used the word ‘community’ three times and ‘belonging’ twice, all above the fold,” creative director Cameron Zach shared. “It’s intentional. It’s educational.” 

Consider whether your website helps users quickly find:

• Admissions, enrollment, or registration information
• Tuition, financial aid, or affordability details
• Academic programs
• Athletics and arts
• Faculty and staff directory
• Calendars and events
• News and announcements
• Forms and documents
• Portals and login links
• Transportation, dining, health, and safety information
• Giving and alumni resources

If your analytics, AI chatbot conversations, or community feedback show that visitors are struggling to find high-priority content, a redesign can help you rebuild the structure around real user needs.

5. Your website is not accessible enough

Accessibility should be part of every school website redesign from the beginning. An accessible website helps more people find, understand, and use your content, including people with disabilities, people using assistive technology, multilingual families, mobile users, and anyone trying to complete a task quickly.

For public school districts and other public entities, accessibility has become even more important. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Title II web and mobile app accessibility rule sets specific requirements for state and local government web content and mobile apps, with WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard.

“When we picked Finalsite, we talked to the different vendors that we interviewed about their accessibility and making sure things are ADA compliant. But since that federal mandate, it’s been at the forefront of our mind,” shared Lynn Streubel of Appleton Area School District’s Information Technology Department.

For a district serving more than 15,000 students, this approach created compliance issues for parents and students, and for staff in updating information across multiple websites.

“Having access to all of our pages in one view in Composer has saved us a huge amount of time... When it’s something that has to go on every site, (it) probably saves half a day of work.” 

During a redesign, accessibility considerations should include:

• Color contrast
• Heading structure
• Keyboard navigation
• Descriptive link text
• Alt text for images
• Captions and transcripts for video
• Accessible forms and labels
• Clear error messages
• Readable font sizes
• Logical page structure
• Accessible PDFs and documents
• Mobile accessibility
• Content governance after launch

Accessibility isn’t a one-time launch checklist. It’s an ongoing content best practice. Your redesign should give your team the tools, training, and workflows to keep content accessible as pages change.

6. Your website is difficult for your team to update

A beautiful website will only stay useful if your team can keep it current.

If your school team avoids making updates because the CMS is confusing, the process takes too long, or every change requires a developer or IT ticket (and a prayer), your website will quickly become outdated. 

Your content management system should help your team:

• Build and update pages without coding
• Keep content on-brand
• Reuse content across pages
• Preview pages before publishing
• Schedule timely updates
• Manage role-based permissions
• Add alerts or banners quickly
• Organize photos, videos, and documents
• Maintain SEO basics
• Identify accessibility issues
• Keep calendars, posts, directories, and resources current

This is where the redesign process and the CMS need to work together. A new website will look better and deliver a system your team can confidently manage after launch.

If your current website makes simple updates feel complicated, it may be time to rethink both the design and the platform behind it.

Key Takeaway

Even if your school website only shows a few of these signs, it may be time to start planning and reach out to a school website redesign service.

Your website is one of your most important tools for engaging your school community, building trust, and supporting enrollment. It should reflect who you are, help families find what they need, and make your team’s work easier.

Make that first (and second, and third...) impression as strong as possible with a redesigned website that accurately shows off your school’s excellence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Connor has spent the last decade within the field of marketing and communications, working with independent schools and colleges throughout New England. At Finalsite, Connor plans and executes marketing strategies and digital content across the web. A former photojournalist, he has a passion for digital media, storytelling, coffee, and creating content that connects.