Jakarta Intercultural School

"With 2-3 people spending most of their time getting the website ready for launch, support from countless others in helping gather and create content, and with the full support and backing of our Head of School and administrative team, we had a very successful website redesign.” 

 

Their beautiful best-in-class design highlights their three campuses in Indonesia. Instead of a large hero image, this homepage design features a collage of images and text. Each image is a separate call-to-action, directing traffic to the About, Admissions, Athletics, and Service landing pages respectively. 

Their customized cursor adds more than on-brand flare; it encourages user interactivity from the get-go. And their vine animation adds extra detail and unifies the various homepage panels. The design also has a deep cultural connection to Indonesian batik and the vines wrapped around the trees at JIS

Immediate and Measurable Impact on Engagement

Shortly after they launched their redesigned website, JIS saw a reduction in bounce rates and an increase in time spent on pages. They were also able to easily create a landing page for their Open House campaigns.

“Not only did we create a landing page but we used a Finalsite form to make it a more streamlined process. The new look and feel of the site, the landing page, and Finalsite forms all contributed to an increase in registrations from previous years.” 

They have used the forms feature for more than just Open House campaigns and have seen good engagement because of it.

“Our admissions team has been really happy with the increased interest in the site and the amount of families that we have contacting us via the web. “

The Power of Portals

 

“Our portal is in some ways more comprehensive than our public site. It’s the place where everyone in our community can go for support, resources, and information. “

Phase two of the website launch was to tackle their community portal which, as Nick explained, had become the “tragedy of the commons.” The fate of the Boston Common upon opening, when everyone in Boston loved it and used it, but no one was there to maintain it and it eventually became a mess. 

“Our portal became a dumping ground for information and in turn became near impossible to navigate effectively,” Nick said.

Their first goal was to sift through the content and see what was no longer useful. They sent check lists out to each division that had a page in the portal (HS, MS, ES, HR, Risk Management, etc) and asked them to review their content and suggest what to keep, what to edit, and what to delete. Armed with updated information, they started adding content to their new portal which was designed as simple as possible to encourage easy navigation. 

To ensure they could streamline messaging and also promote the links and pages that were most used by each constituent group, they created four portals: Faculty/Staff, Parent, Student, Alumni. 

 

For example, high school students can easily access platforms to hand in assignments while faculty and staff can easily access their payroll information. We share much of the same information Across portals, but we also are able to control access to pages that are specific to a certain group.  Their strategy to put all of the necessary documents and communications in one place has worked especially well during the COVID pandemic. 

Driving traffic to the portal is important, so we often link to it in our school wide communications. Within the portal we provide more detailed information and our PTA and other parent led organizations have a place in the portal to share information, recruit volunteers, and speak to the community. 

“Much of the success of the portal also relied on our collaboration with the community," Nick said. "We wanted every division and parent organization to feel a sense of ownership over their part of the portal, and we worked very closely with them to make sure it presented the information that they wanted. Without this collaboration the portal would not have been the success that we feel it is.”

Summary

With all the hard work behind them, the maintenance of the website and portal is managed by the JIS Webmaster, who works closely with the different divisions to make sure content is current.  JIS has become more particular with what information goes on the portal and where that information lives. Their goal is to be very deliberate when adding pages and always try to remove or combine pages when possible to keep the portal free of clutter. JIS has put in systems to ensure that the portal stays clean, navigable, and usable.

"The support that we've gotten from the team at Finalsite has been great. We look forward to learning more ways to make our digital experience the best it can be for potential new families and our current community."