Northville Public Schools

Working alongside Finalsite Advantage, Finalsite’s strategic marketing services team, Northville Public Schools embarked on a district rebrand and website redesign that brought together storytelling, accessibility, user experience, and community trust into a cohesive digital strategy.

The Challenge

A district website that families weren’t relying on

“We really wanted to reclaim the narrative,” RJ explained. “We had so many different sites that our parents weren’t coming to our main website for information. It just wasn’t functioning.”

Internally, the website structure had been built around departments, rather than user needs. Parents often had to know which department handled each responsibility before they could find the right information or point of contact.

“In a department-centric model, if a parent didn’t know which specific department managed a resource, the information became difficult to access,” explained Darby Hoppenstedt, Northville’s Director of Community Partnerships and Wellness.

During the redesign process, the district uncovered issues with accessibility and site content. Important information lived inside PDFs that were difficult to search, inaccessible on mobile devices, and challenging for families to navigate.

“We had to confront what I call the ‘grandma’s basement’ portion of our website,” Darby said with a laugh. “Digital clutter, outdated files, and a PDF graveyard.”

Leading through change

At the same time, Northville faced pressure and questions about the project's value. RJ understood that rethinking branding, navigation, and long-standing content would lead to hard conversations, and he saw his role as superintendent as helping protect the team’s ability to do the work.

“We had multiple stakeholders who thought this was the wrong move, and a waste of time and money,” RJ said candidly. “One of the biggest things I could do to help the team was to be their shield and own the decision.”

That leadership helped the team move forward with confidence, even when the work required an evolution of long-standing traditions.

The Solution

A strategy-first redesign built around families, storytelling, and trust

Northville partnered with Finalsite Advantage to build an accessible website experience rooted in storytelling, informed by analytics, and focused on community engagement.

But before Northville’s new website could come to life, the team needed to answer a few important questions: 

• What story should the site tell? 
• What information did families need most?
• How could the district stand out in a competitive area while still honoring its history?

With support from Finalsite Advantage, Northville took the time to study peer districts, map out its priorities for the homepage, review site data, plan navigation, and complete its branding work before moving into design.

Each step helped the team make informed decisions before the site was built, so the finished product could better reflect Northville’s story, serve families, and celebrate the district’s new identity.

Cleaning up years of outdated content

At the same time, Northville tackled a full digital cleanup effort. Hundreds of outdated pages and documents were audited, reorganized, rewritten, or removed. PDF-heavy content was converted into searchable, accessible web pages that worked better across devices.

“We asked the question on all the pages: ‘Does this need to be on our website?” Judy said.

As Northville moved from planning to page building, the project's scope became clearer. Judy, who had 18 years of web design experience, worked through Finalsite’s modules and began turning the district’s strategy into fully built pages. The work became even more complex when a communications team member left during a critical phase of the project.

While Judy and Darby stepped in to manage the surge in photo, video, and content work, Judy quickly recognized that sustaining this pace solo while meeting deadlines was impossible. To maintain momentum without sacrificing quality, Northville strategically expanded the team. 

Student interns and staff members helped with content and media, while RJ approved additional support from Finalsite’s virtual webmasters to keep the project moving.

“This is why it’s important to have people on your team who will tell you the truth,” RJ added. “I firmly believe that if you’re a superintendent leading a rebrand of your district, you have to lead it as the superintendent.”

RJ described Northville’s rebrand as “an evolution, not a revolution,” emphasizing the need to modernize the district’s identity while still honoring its history and community pride.

Turning the website into a storytelling platform

The redesign also focused heavily on visual storytelling, complete with videos, points of pride, district-wide branding consistency, and enrollment-focused pages designed to help prospective families feel connected to the district from their first visit.

“The vision here was to give potential new families a place to feel like home by taking the storytelling approach,” Judy explained.

“It really pleases me to see that it’s working and that people are coming to our main site,” RJ said after launch.

The district also achieved a more consistent digital experience across schools while still allowing each building to maintain its personality and highlights. “We wanted to appear as a school district, not a district of schools,” Darby shared.

Operationally, reusable content modules streamlined the editing process and eliminated redundant updates across the district’s 12 school sites. By utilizing these modules, the district reduced duplicate tasks by 90%, transforming what was once a multi-hour project into a single, five-minute update. This ensures the community receives consistent, reliable information across every platform. Consequently, the public response to the redesign has been significantly more positive than originally anticipated.     

For Northville, the project strengthened collaboration across departments, modernized the district’s digital identity, and gave families a clearer, more engaging way to connect with their schools.

The team had built stronger trust with one another through months of planning, decision-making, problem-solving, and honest conversations.

“You build relationships by doing the work,” RJ said. “When you are in the saddle for a year doing work and learning to push and pull, that’s where true bonds are made. I came out of this year with two new people in my life that I got to know so much better. I feel like I picked up two colleagues I’d jump into any foxhole with.”

“I’m incredibly proud of this new website,” Judy said. “I love what we’ve done with it, and I’m proud to be part of this team that created such a great resource for our community.”