The Broadalbin-Perth Central School District launched a newly redesigned website today, boasting enhanced search and navigation tools, a cleaner and more streamlined visual layout, and the ability to more prominently feature current photos, news stories, and videos. The new website uses the same URL as the previous design, https://www.bpcsd.org/.
The website, which is maintained by the award-winning communications team at B-P, was researched, developed and designed over the past year and a half with the Capital Region BOCES Communications Service, with valuable input from a number of community stakeholders, including parents, teachers, staff, alumni, students, and community members.
“This past year with COVID-19 has reminded us just how important it is to have a reliable and effective way to communicate with our community,” Superintendent of Schools Stephen Tomlinson said. “The website is one of several platforms we use to share information with our community, but in my mind, it is one of the most important because of the ability it provides us to reach such a large audience.”
Website development started in spring 2019, with an online survey of the community that allowed the B-P communications team to better assess how the district’s website is used, including the frequency with which people go to the website, what devices they use to access it, and what information they are looking for when visiting the site.
Survey analysis revealed the community’s priorities of expecting to see timely information and coverage of school events, with the desire to see current pictures of students and more content revealing what happens inside the classroom. Additional feedback placed a high priority on easy navigation and search abilities.
All of those priorities and more are addressed in B-P’s redesigned site. Visitors will notice most information is categorized by six major topics: About B-P, Academics, Athletics, Board of Education, Community, and Services. Clicking each of these tabs will bring visitors to a new page with several sub-heads of information relevant to the main title.
“You can tell a lot about a school district, just by looking at their website,” Tomlinson said. “A modern-looking website with up-to-date information and a variety of fresh photos and videos helps to brand the school as an innovative leader and a trusted source of information for the community. An effective website has the ability to communicate a district’s priorities and build stakeholder confidence from just one visit.”
The website’s versatile layout adapts to different screen viewers (smart phones, tablets and desktop computers), as well as multiple web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, etc), without the need for the viewer to resize their browser window.
The previous website design had been in place since fall 2015.