Every school website redesign puts an important question in front of its leaders: What should families understand about our school within the first few clicks?

The most successful school website redesigns need something (or someone) bigger behind them answering that question: leadership.

With the support of a school leader at your back, your team can think bigger than pages and design, and have more of an opportunity to define how your school wants to be known, understood, and experienced.

At a higher strategic level, though, a website redesign project can strengthen community bonds and support enrollment growth, which makes it a natural place for school leaders to take an active role.

Here’s how school leaders can guide a redesign, rally support, and help turn a major project into a meaningful step forward for the whole school.

A School Website Redesign is a Leadership Moment

The homepage and interior pages might be where the work takes place, but leadership helps shape the story the whole website tells.

For a head of school or superintendent, a website redesign is one of the most visible opportunities to show where the school is headed. It gives you a way to connect the daily experience of families with the larger goals you’re already working toward, whether that’s improving communication, unifying a community, or helping new families better understand your mission.

That doesn’t mean leaders need to manage the details of the redesign themselves—they have enough going on. In fact, the best role for leadership is usually not down in the trenches juggling day-to-day project management. Leadership helps define why the redesign is needed now, what it needs to accomplish, and how it connects to the school’s future.

From there, your teams can make better decisions because they’re working from a shared purpose, and the redesign becomes less of a technical lift and more of a school-wide investment.

“There are many factors involved with enrollment, but the website was clearly ground zero,” shared Wayland Academy Head of School Jason Warnick, who supported the project from the get-go.

“We saw an over 60 percent increase in completed apps in one year, and we’re experiencing an enrollment increase of over 30 percent. We also made strides with fundraising and constituent engagement and went public with a successful capital campaign.”

School Leadership Sets the Vision, Not Every Button Color

One of the easiest ways for a redesign to lose steam is for leadership to become either too involved or not enough. There’s a “sweet spot.”

When leaders are too removed, the website design can lack direction, and teams may struggle to make decisions.

But when leaders are too involved in every detail, the process can slow down, and the team may lose the creative room they need to do the work well.

The strongest leadership role lies in the middle, setting the vision, defining priorities, and helping the team understand what the website needs to say about the school. They don’t need to choose every image, approve every button, or rewrite every page. They do need to help the project team understand what the site should accomplish when it goes live.

That starts with a few important questions: 

• What should families understand quickly when they visit the site? 
• Which audiences matter most? 
• Which actions should be easier?

Leaders can also help identify what needs to be changed. Maybe the school’s grown, added programs, or refined its mission. Maybe it shifted enrollment priorities, expanded student support, invested in facilities, or developed a stronger identity.

Those changes may be obvious to people inside the school, but they may not be visible on the current website. A redesign gives you a chance to change that.

Once that direction is set, the project team can move with greater confidence and make decisions with confidence.

A Stronger Redesign Project Builds a Stronger Brand

Before they visit campus, attend an open house, email admissions, call the front office, or speak with another parent, families are likely spending time on your site and forming opinions from what they see and what they don’t.

It may still be telling an older version of your story, or it may not reflect the quality of your programs, the care of your faculty, the strength of your community, or the direction of your leadership—yet.

A redesign gives you the chance to represent your school with more accuracy and intention. It’s a branding opportunity to sharpen how you communicate your mission.

Choices around design elements, mobile responsiveness, content strategy, lead generation, and user experience all shape perception, and that level of representation takes leadership support, honest reflection, and a willingness to look at the website through the eyes of the people who depend on it.

“We had multiple stakeholders who thought this was the wrong move, and a waste of time and money,” shared Northville Public Schools Superintendent Dr. RJ Webber, whose award-winning redesign reduced duplicate tasks by 90% and a 17% boost in engagement time.

“One of the biggest things I could do to help the team was to be their shield and own the decision,” he added. “I firmly believe that if you’re a superintendent leading a rebrand of your district, you have to lead it as the superintendent.” Spoken like a true leader!

Leadership Support Helps Rally the Community

A redesign asks a lot from a team that's already busy. There are pages to review, photos to gather, messages to refine, decisions to make, departments to include, and timelines to manage. Not to mention, budgets…

For many schools, the people leading the redesign are also managing newsletters, events, admissions campaigns, board communications, social media, family updates, and daily website requests at the same time.

Visible support from leadership matters so much during that process.

Making it a Priority

When leadership communicates that the redesign is a priority, people understand that their participation is important, and they’re more likely to provide feedback on time, review their content thoughtfully, and approach the project with a sense of shared responsibility. The redesign stops feeling like something the communications team is asking for and starts feeling like something the school is building together.

Remembering The Why

Change can make people protective of the processes they’re used to, even when those pieces no longer serve the larger goal or target audience. A leader can help bring the conversation back to purpose: making the website easier to use, more accurate, more welcoming, and more reflective of the school’s direction.

A Shared Investment

A well-led redesign can build enthusiasm before the new site launches. Staff can feel proud that their work is being represented well, and families can feel heard when long-standing website frustrations are addressed. Board members can see the redesign connected to strategic goals, and even students can see their experiences and stories told in a stronger way.

That kind of momentum is hard to create if leadership stays silent, but if leaders talk about the redesign as a shared investment in the school experience, people are more likely to see themselves in the work and celebrate the outcome.

What School Leaders Should Own During the Redesign

Leaders don’t need to own every redesign task, but there are several areas where their involvement can strengthen the project.

Own the purpose

The project team needs to know why the redesign matters now and how it connects to the school’s larger priorities.

If the goal is to support enrollment or to make information easier for families, say it. If the goal is to unify a district or better represent a new strategic plan, say that, too. Naming the purpose gives the team a stronger foundation for decision-making.

Set the priorities 

A website can’t give every audience, page, and message the same level of attention. Part of the redesign process involves making choices about what comes first, what moves down, what gets rewritten, and what can be removed. Leadership can help identify the audiences and actions that matter most, which keeps the project from being pulled in too many directions.

Bring the Support

Support is another important area. That may mean giving the project team access to the right decision-makers, protecting time for content work, helping resolve competing priorities, or reinforcing deadlines when needed.

Keep the momentum

A redesign takes time, and people may lose energy along the way if they only hear about the project at kickoff and launch. Post launch, a few thoughtful updates from leadership can keep the work visible and valued, especially when those updates connect the project back to what families, staff, and students will gain.

What Leaders Should Leave to the Project Team

In many cases, the best thing a leader can do is set the direction, then trust their team to do the best work possible.

That can be harder than it sounds, especially with a project as visible as a website redesign. Everyone has opinions about the homepage, the photography, the colors, the navigation, and the language. While leaders often have strong instincts about how the school should be represented, if every decision requires executive approval, the process will slow down quickly.

Leaders should stay close to the decisions that shape the project's direction, such as goals, audience priorities, homepage strategy, major messaging themes, and communications.

They can step back from smaller choices, like individual page layouts or minor copy edits, unless those choices affect a larger strategic priority.

Leadership sets the vision while the project team leads the work, stakeholders provide input, and decision-makers make decisions. The process is more focused and far less frustrating for everyone involved when those roles are understood early.

Key Takeaway

A school website redesign gives you a rare opportunity to bring people together around where your school is headed. When your leaders are involved early, connect the work to a larger purpose, and give your team the support to move forward, the redesign becomes a statement about your leadership, your community, and the experience you want every family to have with your school.

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.