Chisholm Trail Academy Website Redesign

THE BRIEF

The goal of the Chisholm Trail Academy website design was to overhaul the existing website to better serve students, parents, and alumni. As a private, Christian college prep school located in Keene, Texas it was important to showcase the school's religious programs in addition to its state-leading educational curriculum. While the site was mobile optimized, it did not use the Chisholm Trail Academy style guide or the rich library of school photography.

CHISHOLM TRAIL ACADEMY WEBSITE PROCESS

Our team spent several weeks doing a comprehensive asset audit of Chisholm Trail Academy's marketing materials, asset libraries, and web pages to develop the feature and functionality matrix – our custom roadmap for the site’s development. After receiving CTA’s approval on the functionality matrix, we created a fully functional prototype (no colors or photos) to test usability on various devices. This process allowed us to gain valuable insights into how the CTA staff navigated the website. The lessons learned from the prototype allowed our designers to create two design variations of the new site with a high degree of confidence. The final design ended up as a hybrid of the two approaches, and we quickly implemented the mockups onto the existing prototype. In parallel to the design work, we began to migrate content from the legacy site, while revising copy to the newest brand standards.  Before wrapping development, we were able to provide several notable enhancements:

• A donation system that allows for recurring giving and robust reporting tools for staff.
• Google Calendar feeds so parents and students can keep track of school events.
• The tuition and fee chart provides parents with price comparisons and tuition breakdowns.
• Lead generation tools collect data on prospective students allowing the admissions staff to follow up with parents.

THE OUTCOME

• Funding goals have been met.
• Increase in site and conversions from search.
• Online donations are another pillar in giving to the school.