SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT
Girls Preparatory School
Girls Preparatory School (GPS) believes that during a girl's middle and high school years, she benefits most from attending a school that’s designed specifically for her.
So when the Tennessee school began a full rebrand and website redesign, the communications team saw an opportunity to bring that belief to life by creating a digital experience that reflects GPS's uniqueness at each stage of the family journey.
For Caitlin Riddle, director of communications and marketing at GPS, the projects became an opportunity to examine the school’s identity and how it appeared across every digital channel.
At a Glance
Located in Chattanooga, GPS is one of Tennessee's premier college preparatory schools for girls, empowering students to lead with confidence through exceptional experiences and educating the whole girl—in mind, body, and spirit.
“I’m obsessed with everything to do with design, branding, and user experience,” she shared, knowing full well that a strong school brand requires much more than a logo, color palette, or new homepage.
Translating a well-defined brand into a connected digital experience is a different challenge. GPS wanted every interaction, from its website and admissions journey to email communications and enrollment experience, to feel intentional, consistent, and unmistakably GPS.
To bring that vision to life, the school partnered with Finalsite’s strategic marketing team, Advantage. Working alongside experienced school marketers with deep knowledge of both K-12 communications and the Finalsite platform, the team aligned GPS's brand strategy with its digital ecosystem, creating a seamless family experience from one interaction to the next.
“We went through a year-long process to launch our new website,” Caitlin said. “That really was an exploration of our brand, discovering who GPS is and how we wanted to present ourselves on our new platform.”
“To launch our new website, that really was an exploration of our brand, discovering who GPS is and how we wanted to present ourselves on our new platform."
CAITLIN RIDDLE
DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING
The Challenge: Helping families see the uniqueness of GPS
Independent schools often use similar language to describe themselves. Familiar terms such as community, belonging, academic rigor, and supportive faculty appear across many school websites and in marketing materials.
And while those ideas may be accurate, they don’t always necessarily help a prospective family understand how one school’s experience differs from another.
How does a prospective family understand what those words mean? GPS wanted every interaction to answer that question and communicate the school’s character, student experience, and outcomes without relying on overused claims.
The Finalsite Advantage team helped GPS examine that challenge, working as an extension of a school’s team to connect brand strategy with enrollment communications, messaging, and the digital family experience.
The Solution: Building the brand across every touchpoint
Rather than beginning with wireframes, page layouts, or visual concepts, GPS started with its identity.
Working alongside Finalsite Advantage, the GPS communications team revisited the school's mission, gathered stakeholder input, and explored how students, parents, faculty, and administrators described what made GPS different. Instead of beginning with "What do we offer?", the team asked a more meaningful question: "Who do students become because they attend Girls Preparatory School?"
By aligning around identity first, GPS could make design and content decisions with greater confidence. Every page, photo, headline, and call to action could then communicate the same central story.
This strengthened the GPS brand from the inside out.
Faculty, staff, and admissions teams gained a shared understanding of how to tell the school's story, while prospective families learned what makes the GPS experience unique.
Turning a school tradition into a visual signature
One of the strongest brand elements came from something GPS students wear every day: a distinctive bow.
Rather than treating the bow solely as part of the school uniform, the communications team incorporated it throughout the website and marketing materials. It became a subtle visual signature that families could immediately associate with GPS.
“Our school has a pretty distinctive uniform,” Caitlin said, adding that the bow works because it comes directly from the student experience. “Every girl has to wear a black bow with her dress, so we brought it into the website. Our bow is fun, it belongs to us, and it’s a branding element that makes people say, ‘That’s GPS.’”
A Website That Guides Families
Working with Finalsite Advantage, GPS aligned its website messaging with admissions materials, inquiry forms, automated emails, photography, and design.
The public-facing website, built in Finalsite’s content management system, Composer, gives prospective families the information they need to understand the GPS experience before taking the first step to inquire.
And to help families better understand the enrollment process, GPS created a custom timeline that outlines each step of the admissions process and directs visitors to the enrollment portal.
Using automation without losing the personal connection
Using Finalsite's AI-powered website assistant, Ask AI, which GPS cleverly rebranded as "Bruiser Bot," each experience reinforces the school's identity.
If families have questions, they no longer have to dig through the website to hopefully find an answer.
Families simply type their questions into the chatbot, and Ask AI provides immediate answers using only school-approved content sources like public web pages, linked documents, and uploaded resources.
And when families are ready to take action, Finalsite Enrollment and automated email workflows continue telling their story after a family completes an inquiry form.
Prospective families can receive communications based on their stage in the admissions process. Automation supports the staff behind the experience without making family communications feel generic, while the admissions team spends less time building and sending repetitive campaigns.
Creating a strategy the team can continue using
Finalsite Advantage also gave GPS a framework for future work.
New landing pages, admissions campaigns, email sequences, print materials, and website updates no longer needed to begin from an empty page.
The team can return to the same messaging foundation and visual standards to work more efficiently and still protect the brand as new needs emerge.
The Results: Award-winning design supported by growth
- Soon after launch, the newly redesigned website earned national recognition, receiving both a "Best of Show Website" award for outstanding achievement in internet advertising and a "Best School Website" award from the Web Marketing Association.
- The launch also produced measurable gains in visibility. In just the first six months after launch, GPS saw a 42% increase in organic traffic compared to the same period during the previous year.
The impact was greater than increased website traffic or industry recognition, though. GPS gained a connected system for communicating with families and a stronger foundation for future marketing and enrollment efforts.
By focusing on who students become, not just what the school offers, the team created an experience that shows the GPS community and guides families through a journey designed specifically for them.
As the school continues to evolve, that foundation allows every new campaign, webpage, email, and family interaction to reinforce the same story: what it means to become part of the GPS community.
GPS now benefits from:
- A consistent brand across all platforms
- Automated communications that reduce repetitive work for staff
- A smoother admissions journey for prospective families
- A shared framework for telling the GPS story across departments and channels
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