Community Feedback Guides FHSD Website Redesign
Forest Hills School District completed a website upgrade and redesign process of foresthills.edu in June that was the culmination of months of review, feedback and planning. The district’s goal throughout the process has been to improve the distribution of critical information to students, families, staff members and the community, while also updating certain features and providing a better overall experience for users.
It is important to note that the name and address of the website are not changing. People will still use the familiar foresthills.edu to access the newly redesigned website. It may take up to 72 hours for the changes to be visible to all users, depending on their internet service provider. Forest Hills School District partnered with Legend Web Works LLC, a Mason-based company, to redesign and host the new website.
The district gathered feedback through a community-wide survey in March to help pinpoint areas for improvement and learn more about how students, staff, families and community members utilize the website. Of the 429 responses, roughly 77% came from parents or guardians, 17% from staff members and 4% from community members. The remaining responses were from students or other interested parties.
That feedback provided valuable information and helped guide the website redesign efforts. This article will outline some of the changes and improvements introduced to foresthills.edu and will also breakdown the feedback gathered in the survey.
As mentioned in previous updates on the redesign process, the new website will feature advertisements. This will reduce the overall cost to operate the site and should provide a cost savings compared to the previous website.
Calendars
The district calendars came up multiple times as both a positive and negative experience for website users. One significant change on the new website is the switch to Google Calendar for the district and school event/activity calendars. Internal guidelines are also being put in place to ensure these calendars include information about building-wide and/or public events, while eliminating some of the extra information that may not be relevant to most users. This should allow families and community members to see what’s going on more easily and add events to their personal calendars. Days off from school are also included on each digital calendar.
The PDF version of the academic calendar (school-year calendar) can be found here (located on the site under the Resources tab) and the event/activity calendars can be found here (located on the Calendars tab in the top menu bar of the website). Both pages include links to each other, so users can quickly navigate to the appropriate information for their needs.
Navigation/User Experience
The most responses for areas of the previous website that users found unhelpful or created a negative experience were related to site navigation and user experience. Many people who responded did not find the website “user friendly” or they had trouble finding information they were looking for.
The new homepage for foresthills.edu includes a quick links section below the main image to help users quickly find the most frequently searched for information. More than three-quarters of all respondents said they look for the academic calendar and nearly 40% use the website to look-up lunch menus. Other items in the quick links section include attendance phone numbers to report absences, bus route information (which is updated closer to the start of the school year), registration, job opportunities and employment, the Safer Ohio School Tip Line and online payment information for fees, lunch and more.
The new site design retains a familiar menu tab structure, which includes the “Resources” and “How Do I” tabs which many users found helpful and were frequently visited. About 39% of survey respondents regularly visited the Resource Center and approximately 37% utilized the How Do I section on a regular basis.
The top menu bars remain consistent on every page of the website to provide a simpler way to navigate through various sections. When users visit internal pages like a school homepage, that section’s menu structure will appear on the left-hand side of the computer screen (the view may be different on mobile phones). For example, the elementary school homepages include the About, Learning, Student Life, Departments and Calendar sections on the left and the site-wide tabs remain at the top of the screen.
The top menu bar includes sections for About Us, Resources, How Do I, District News, Calendar and Contact. A second menu bar below that is home to Schools, Staff Directory, Board of Education, Departments (Central Office) and Get Involved.
Mobile Responsive
The new website design offers users an updated, responsive layout which will adjust to the size of the screen being used. When asked how they are accessing foresthills.edu, 75% of survey respondents have used a desktop or laptop computer. Another 62% of people have accessed the website through a cell phone or other mobile device, so the district understood this was an important consideration in the overall design.
The responsive website is designed to be easier to use on a mobile device, providing a better experience for families, staff, students and community members.
Search Bar
When asked about what they’d like to change or what creates a negative experience, survey respondents referenced the website’s search bar multiple times. The new search bar is enhanced by Google and can sort search results by relevance or date, rather than the previous search that listed pages alphabetically. This will streamline the search process and make it easier for users to find specific items. To access the search bar, click the magnifying glass icon located just below the top two menu bars. This is available on every page of the website and is illustrated in the accompanying picture.
ADA Compliance
One key consideration in the website redesign was ADA compliance, which has been improved significantly over the previous version. Users can now utilize Google Translate to view foresthills.edu in a large number of languages. Careful efforts were made to ensure photos and other documents were uploaded in an accessible format and the entire site meets current 2.1 WCAG standards for ADA compliance.
Safety Communications
The new website also offers a feature referred to as a “dark site.” This is a tool that is designed to be used in emergency situations to provide important updates to staff, students, families and community members. FHSD hopes there won’t be a need to utilize this tool, but it is important to plan and prepare for any possibility.
The “dark site” will work by directing all website traffic, no matter what link or page a user is trying to access, to the same hub of emergency updates. This will provide a central location where all of the available information is able to be accessed, which will be a helpful tool in addition to normal emergency communications via email, phone, SMS text messaging and social media.
Forest Hills School District is excited to share this new website design with the community. To better celebrate our students, staff and volunteers, new photos have been added throughout the website and on all school homepages. Please keep in mind that some information will continue to be updated throughout the summer as our staff works to wrap up the current school and fiscal year and prepare for the 2023-2024 school year.
Any questions or concerns can be shared with Forest Hills School District by emailing contact@foresthills.edu.
