A school website serves many purposes and caters to an array of audiences. From attracting prospective students to sharing schedules and announcements with current families, it’s often the first place people go for trusted school information.
Like many schools, Montclair Kimberley Academy (MKA) knew the importance of their website but struggled to maximize its potential. Manual updates, a clunky CMS, and a cookie-cutter design held the school back from utilizing their website fully. Learn about their decision to switch vendors and why Digistorm checked all the boxes on their website wish list.
Time for a Change
After a decade with their previous website provider, MKA encountered a perfect storm: their website contract was ending, and the school was about to embark on a full rebranding. “It felt like the natural time to make a big change,” says Ashley Conde, Associate Director of Communications.
In addition to reflecting their new visual identity, MKA wanted to improve the user experience on their website and make it easier for their community to find information. After surveying a few potential vendors, MKA was drawn to Digistorm from both a technology and marketing perspective. Here are five key reasons why.
SIS Integration
One of MKA’s biggest challenges with their website was keeping information updated. Although the website was integrated with the school’s student information system, updates were not always reflected in real time and created a negative user experience. Conde and her team spent considerable time manually updating schedules and mitigating confusion among the community.
As a Veracross school, MKA already used Veracross portals to share information with internal audiences. When they learned about Digistorm Websites by Veracross, they knew it would be a powerful solution to their problem. “Knowing that Digistorm is now part of the Veracross family, we knew that the focus on those integrations would always be first and foremost with Veracross,” says Bill Stites, Director of Technology.
Staff directories, athletic schedules, and school events calendars flow seamlessly from Veracross into Digistorm through a live API connection — no manual syncing or CSV uploading required. “Some of the existing providers say there’s an API to connect them, but it only refreshes in certain intervals,” says Stites. “If an event is changed in the back end of Veracross, I don’t want to have to wait until the 3pm, 6pm, or 9pm sync for the change to come over… the fact that it’s seeing the request, making the call, and seeing it in real-time is a huge win.”
User-Friendly CMS
MKA was also frustrated with their previous website’s content management system (CMS). The CMS was not intuitive and made it difficult for Conde and her team to make simple edits or publish new landing pages. “We really wanted our internal community to have a better experience on the website,” says Conde.
Digistorm Websites run on Craft, the same CMS trusted by global brands like Netflix and Adidas. After previewing the CMS, MKA was drawn to its ease of use and open-source development. Other added benefits include the ability to manage SEO and media assets directly in Digistorm’s CMS instead of relying on a third-party agency.
The Craft CMS also makes it easy to grant permissions to other authorized users at your school — like the development team, for example — but still maintain final approval and publishing authority on all website content.
“It’s intuitive,” says Stites. “If you’re concerned about the learning curve or how long it’ll take to get others up to speed, it’s a fairly simple platform to train on and train around.”
Elevated Design
As part of their rebrand initiative, MKA wanted their website to make a splash and reflect their bold new visual identity. They were tired of using the same templates as every other K-12 school.
“A lot of websites are starting to look similar,” says Conde. “You can tell whose website was designed by what provider just by looking at their homepage design… switching to Digistorm made sense for us. With our rebrand, we were able to make some fun changes and really stand out amongst our peer schools.”
In addition to offering fun and unique templates, Digistorm makes it easy to tweak design elements like font types and colors without the need for coding expertise.
Flexible Contract Terms
MKA was also impressed by Digistorm’s transparent contract terms. While most K-12 website vendors have a standard five-year contract, Digistorm offers a flexible three-year contract. If you’re ready to make a change, the last thing you want is to feel stuck in a never-ending contract!
“You’re not making a large change like this often,” says Stites. “But if you need or want to, knowing that you’re not locked into this extended contract allows us to know we at least have the flexibility if we need to move in a different direction and make a change.”
Pricing
Last but not least, cost is always a big consideration when making any purchase decisions. For MKA, Digistorm was both a comprehensive and cost-effective website solution.
“This came at a savings for us without losing anything we valued or wanted as a school within the context of a website,” says Stites.
The Value of Digistorm Websites
With a seamless integration to Veracross, a user-friendly CMS, elevated designs, and transparent contract and pricing terms, MKA found their perfect website partner with Digistorm.
To learn more about MKA’s website journey, watch our on-demand webinar.
