Breaking News: Your community is craving familiar connections, feel-good content, and up-to-date information, and your school's news section on its website has never been more important.

Just like a newspaper grabs a reader's attention with bold headlines and easy-to-read stories, your school's news should be clean, organized, and ready to pull readers in and help families find what matters most. But if it’s cluttered, outdated, or hard to read on a mobile device, it’s easy to miss the important details and keep your community informed and engaged.

Your school's news can say a lot about program updates, school culture, athletic highlights, and more, but the best news sections on websites share stories and give prospective families a clear sense of what daily life is like.

Plus, a regularly updated news section improves your school’s visibility in search engines, making it easier for new families to find. If you haven't reviewed the user experience, web design elements, color schemes, and navigation menu of your news, now is a great time to do so!

What makes a good news section website design?

• Clean design: Website visitors seeking news want it fast, so your news section should not be muddied down. A clean, mobile-first design ensures visitors can find whatever they need from whatever device they have.
   
• Up-to-date information: You should aim to update your school or district's website section at least once per week — however, more often is better.
   
• Filterable content: The best website experiences are those driven by the user's wants and needs. The content within your news section should be user-friendly and easy to filter by type of story. (Think athletics, alumni news, feature stories, etc.)
   
• A constant flow of information: Digital publishers changed the way we engage with news. When you select a category, you're served up dozens of articles based on both recency and popularity. And then, when you select an article, you're prompted to engage with more "similar content." Your website's news section should offer this same user experience to keep visitors on your website and engaged with your content.
   
• A clear distinction between news and other content: Often, schools combine the blog, news, and events section of their website into a single stream of content — however, it's essential to keep these content pieces separate. News content is timely, while most blog content is evergreen. Evergreen content like feature stories or helpful tips could be categorized in a "feature" or "lifestyle" type category.

Six steps for a better website news section:

1. Send them to a website page, not just a pop-up
2. Add additional reading links
3. Be consistent with images
4. Use categories and tags to simplify searching
5. Spread your news across your site
6. Design for mobile devices 

1. Send readers to a website page, not just a pop-up

Pop-ups that appear when you click certain actions on a website were once a popular way to display news on school websites because they provide access to content in one click and keep website visitors on the same page.

However, they're not the best solution for news stories for a few reasons:

• They don’t provide the same modern news experience today’s website visitors expect. Tiny boxes with lots of text and lots of scrolling are not ideal, especially on mobile.
• When you display news in a pop-up, you don't provide a direct link to the news story, making it difficult to share in email and on social media.
• Pop-ups aren't indexed as their own pages, so Google will have a hard time crawling it, and it won't have a long-term impact on search visibility.

Displaying news articles on individual pages, like Brentwood Union Free School District, ensures the content is mobile-friendly, can easily be shared across communications channels, and will be crawled and indexed by Google.

2. Add additional reading links

Have you ever clicked on a blog post or news article on social media, only to find yourself still on that news website thirty minutes later, a dozen articles deep? That never-ending loop of articles helps these news giants keep you engaged with their content for longer — and you should create this same type of user experience on your website.

In this example from Fryeburg Academy, the news page includes additional reading along the side and thumbnails to make it even more visually engaging.

3. Be consistent with images

The headline and the image are two critical factors that determine if someone reads stories on your website. So, to make your news articles more clickable, follow these best practices for news images:

1. Use high-quality images. This one might sound like a no-brainer, but there’s nothing enticing about a dark, blurry, or pixelated image. If you don't have a high-quality image available, check out websites like Pexels and Unsplash for free stock photography to represent your story.

2. Be sure all of your images are the same size. This is particularly important on your website's news landing page because it keeps things clean and organized.

3. If you don’t have an image, don’t leave it blank! Find a free, related stock photo on a website, or follow suit with Fabens ISD and create your own standard branded image that includes your logo and/or colors to fill those gaps when you can’t find anything that corresponds with your news story!

4. Use categories and tags to simplify searching

Remember the days when you’d get a newspaper delivered to your doorstep in the morning, and you’d immediately flip to the section that interests you most? Comics, lifestyle, obituaries...even in the days of actual newspapers, we still had an index to find what we were interested in — and your website’s news page should follow suit.

In this example from St. Mary's School, website visitors can find news articles from multiple different categories, keyword search, or date of publication.

Pro Tip: Avoid using internal nomenclature (such as homepage news) as a filter on your website, as website visitors won’t know what that entails.

More Great Ideas for School Website News Posts

5. Spread your news across your website

Don’t limit your news stories to the "News" section alone. By strategically placing relevant content in other areas of your website, you can enhance engagement and make it easier for visitors to discover important updates that are more relevant to their interests. Here’s how:

1. Alumni Pages: Have an inspiring alumni success story? Highlight it not just in your news section but also on your alumni page to reinforce the connection alumni feel with your school.
2. Admissions Pages: Featuring news about academic achievements or exciting program developments on your admissions page can help prospective families see the value your school offers, boosting their confidence in your community.
3. Event Pages: When sharing stories related to past or upcoming events, make sure they’re also available on your event pages. Recaps of successful events or highlights of what's coming can build excitement and engagement.
4. Athletics Pages: Athletic achievements and sports updates should shine on your athletics page. Visitors looking for sports info may not visit the main news section, but by placing relevant stories here, you ensure they stay informed and engaged, just like on Durham Academy's athletic page. Using Finalsite's Post module, it's easy to tag news stories and bring them into different areas of your site.

 6. Design your news section for mobile devices

Most families will access your school’s news section from a mobile device, like a smartphone or tablet. If your content isn’t optimized for mobile, it can lead to frustrating user experiences, higher bounce rates, and missed opportunities to engage. Here’s how to make sure your news section gets read on mobile devices:

1. A Responsive Design: Ensure your news section uses a responsive design that adapts smoothly to different screen sizes. This means clear, readable text, easy navigation, and fast loading times—especially for images.
    
2. Scannable Content: Mobile users tend to skim. Use bold headings, short paragraphs, bullet points, and plenty of white space to make your content easy to digest. Break up text with relevant images and callout quotes to keep it engaging.
    
3. Touch-Friendly Elements: Make sure all buttons, links, and menus are large enough to tap on without frustration. Avoid small, hard-to-click elements that can ruin the user experience.
    
4. Optimized Images: Compress images to ensure fast load times without sacrificing quality. Make sure images are responsive and adapt to various screen sizes without becoming pixelated or distorted.
    
5. Simplified Navigation: Mobile visitors should be able to find news categories and search options quickly. Implement a sticky navigation bar or a clear dropdown menu that allows users to filter stories by topic without scrolling endlessly.
    
6. Test, Test, Test: Regularly test your news section on different devices to spot any formatting issues. Ensuring the section is intuitive on all mobile devices keeps families engaged with your content no matter where they access it.

The news section of Moses Brown School features large, mobile-friendly, and responsive new stories to share its stories across any device. As users scroll through the latest content, there's even a slight animation that engages readers even more.

Key Takeaway

If you’re putting effort into writing news stories for your school or district’s website, you want them to be enjoyed, read, and even shared. Take the extra time and effort to implement these six simple changes to lower bounce rates, increase traffic, shares, and more!