Websites say a lot about a company or, for that matter, a school district.

“Schools need to pay attention to their public in the same way businesses do,” said Ms. Terri Osland, Media and Technology Integration Specialist for the Hopkins School District. “15 years ago, a prospective student would come with their parents and look around. Today, people rule in or out certain districts based on their website. It’s important to maintain the quality of the website the same way we maintain the quality of the building.”

In early January, the Hopkins School District launched a newly designed website. Although the software didn’t change entirely, important changes and modifications were made to the website in order to make it more accessible and efficient for users.

“We wanted to analyze what people were using the website for, how they were using it, and what the most important updates needed to be made,” said Sid Voss, Director of Educational Technology, Media Services and Information Systems.

After analyzing the website usage trends, Voss found that most web visits tie into getting quick access to contacts, learning tools and learning resources like Moodle. According to Voss, key goals of the project were to make it easier to embed photo and video content, make Twitter and other social networking resources more readily available on the front page and make the website easier to view on iPads, Androids and mobile devices.

Osland believes that the way that a website looks – organized and regularly updated – is an important reflection of success.

“We know from looking at trends in our website visits that the average user comes on between 30-60 seconds for a specific purpose, usually to access a key piece of information and then leave. That’s why we needed to make the most important information accessible right away when you enter the website,” Osland said.

The district began the web-updating project in September.

“We are most excited that people can go to the website, find what they want more quickly and leave. Also, for our teachers we have made it much easier for them to embed video and photo content,” Voss said.

Although the redesigning of the website is done, Voss plans to continue to push for improvements to the website, specifically in communicating information to the

community in an efficient and timely manner.