Flow was proud to launch a fresh website for St Mary’s School, Waverley today, in synch with the start of the 2016 academic year.
St Mary’s website was a long-awaited project that Flow designers, developers and writers tackled with innovation and enthusiasm, producing an end product that meets every requirement as outlined in the brief.
Flow has enjoyed an excellent, long-standing working relationship with Johannesburg’s oldest school, having produced many newsletters, annual magazines and a book commemorating its 125th anniversary.
“We’ve been keen to create a fresh website for the school for a long time, so we approached the work confident in the knowledge that we fully understand the look and feel they were after,” says Flow project manager Ros Caboz.
Apart from giving the website a total overhaul to make it more user-friendly and easier to navigate, the new site is responsive and can be viewed equally well across platforms ranging from cellphones to desktop computers. The new site also seamlessly integrates the four elements that make up the St Mary's portfolio: Little Saints, the Junior School, the Senior School and the St Mary's Foundation.
From a design perspective, the new site is clean and clutter-free, thanks to the removal of dated elements such as long drop-down menus and multiple headers.
Ultimately, the site presents the user with a highly visual, engaging interface achieved by optimal use of stunning images provided by the school.
"The St Mary's platform foundation is really thinking about the future of communication. We've adopted a create-once, publish everywhere methodology, which is so important with this kind of communication," says Flow web developer Alex Cowling. "We believe we've upheld the school's brand by building a beautiful and usable tool."
Flow is also of the firm belief that every site's content is as important as its functionality and design.
Says Flow writer Willem Steenkamp, “In the three years I've worked on St Mary's content – including its history, annual magazines and its various newsletters – we've developed a strong, consistent written communication style for the school. It was great to apply it to the website also, to standardise all of St Mary's marketing communications.”
Part of the brief was to develop a site that the school can continue to maintain internally. This means St Mary’s appointees will take on the task of uploading and updating content via the site's content management system, a service that Flow conventionally provides to clients.
In order to learn the skills required to do this, a website management team will soon be undergoing training with Flow, with a view to eventually generating their own digital newsletters direct from the new site and putting into practice the school motto: "Educating tomorrow's leaders."
