Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the school marketers are always focusing on their website, social media, and digital marketing strategies. However, as the year 2020 has completely transformed the educational sector, the schools are also revamping their websites to be more attractive, interactive, and useful. In the year 2021, we have witnessed a growing trend of revamping schools’ websites, mostly the customers are interested in customized website designs to meet their specific needs and objectives. As soon as the summer holidays started we have witnessed a sudden increase in the school website revamping queries. All types and sizes of schools are trying to improve their users’ experience online by making their websites more interactive, useful, and impactful. Another important factor that is compelling schools to revamp their websites is online schooling, as the schools, colleges, and other educational entities went online due to the COVID situation, the websites have become more important as parents and students are heavily relying on the websites for news and updates.
Since most of the schools and educational institutes are online, so a school website has become a very strong marketing tool as well. Schools can use their websites to improve their brand image. The school websites are also a great platform to market their facilities and courses online and get more online conversions/admissions. The school websites can be designed to facilitate the online enrollment process, or online registrations, the marketing material could be hosted on the website to attract more attention from the targeted audience. The website is available 24/7, rather parents have to plan a visit to the school to get the required pre-admission information, and they can simply go to the school website to get access to such information. Moreover, the schools can easily advertise their marketing materials on the website. In addition to all that, the school websites can also provide separate portals for students, parents, and teachers to make the management of online or regular operations simpler and easier for the school management and everyone else.
Here are some emerging website trends for schools in 2021:
The Full-Width Landing Screen Homepage
The homepage in any web design is the most important part of a website. For school websites, the homepage is even more important as it is targeting totally different audiences, the parents, the students, and the teachers. Here the school management should decide which part needs what proportion or portion of the homepage. The landing screen of any web design is the very first screen that renders when you open a web link. For homepage, mostly contains an image slider or multimedia section with attractive sales pitches, the logo of the brand, navigations/menus, and some other useful links. Traditionally the multimedia section occupies only 40 to 50 percent of the very first landing screen of the homepage. However, in the year 2021, the web design trends are changing and we are viewing the full-width landing screens more often. For school websites, the full width landing screen contains, taglines, images, or multimedia content occupying almost 80 percent of the screen and menus/navigations.
This is not a completely new trend, other business sectors have started to adopt this web trend a few years ago. The full width landing screen homepage designs have proven to be more impactful and effective for online conversions. As the schools are also seeking more online conversions and admission through their websites, so they are also starting to adopt the trend. Usually, there are multiple sliders placed in the homepage’s first landing screen. Which provides catchy information for the key points of sales for the school such as their features, facilities, teachers, and other important factors that can encourage the parents and students to take admission.
Parallax or Interactive Scrolling
Parallax or interactive scrolling is a web design technique very popular in Dubai and all around the UAE. The interactive scrolling means that the website responds to the scroll and populates design elements in an animated movement as the user keeps scrolling through the web page. The parallax or interactive scrolling enables businesses to design and develop extremely user-centric interactive layouts. For school websites as the audiences’ demographics is very diverse so the design should be programmed to improve the user experience for all. Basically, this is achieved with different approaches sometimes, there are several layers that are overlapping each other and with the scrolling, each layer moves at a different pace, sometimes it is altogether a new layout appearing in an animated movement and replacing the previous sections. In some cases, the web designers use parallax to scroll the web page in both horizontal and vertical directions.
There are so many different methods and techniques used to design a user experience that is not possible with any traditional web design technique. The main objective is to enhance the user experience, improve the visual impact of the web design and make it more engaging for the visitors. Most of our daily internet surfing is subconscious, but not entirely because eventually, the user will try to find the content they are looking for. The way our brain works is very complex our brain processes the background and foreground separately, the visuals with depth alert our brain to pay more attention, which is what the web designer exploits with the parallax or interactive scrolling. Here the important thing to understand is that the parallax and animated visuals can increase the loading time as well. There is always a disagreement between the web designers about the user attentions above the fold or below the fold, however, the parallax designs or interactive scrolling minimize this effect. It encourages the users to keep scrolling until the bottom occurs. This way the user is compelled to absorb more content from the web page which definitely increases the chance of the online conversion.
Micro Interactions
By definition, micro-interactions are the highly visual changes in the user interface which are triggered by a user action or a change in the system. In terms of web designs, micro-interactions are extremely useful to improve user engagements and user experience. The user experience is very important in any web design, for school websites the user experience will make the website more memorable and more attractive for the visitors. The micro-interactions create a very interactive user interface that reacts to each move of the user and maintain their interest in the web page for longer. The human brain automatically pays more attentions to the moving visuals than static imagery. The micro interactions are made out of small design elements that move or change or response to the users whenever the users move their cursor on them.
Such interactive design elements keep the user engaged. This way the users can absorb more content without getting bored or uninterested. Another great advantage of a well-crafted user interface is that it gives an impression of higher standards and good brand quality. The micro interactions are very easy to build, they don’t overload the web page, the loading speed remains under control and there is no such disadvantage. The only thing that could bother your users is the overdoing of the micro interactions. If a user interface is very highly responsive and very reactive then the chances are user might feel too many motion and they could get repelled from the website.
Fonts, Color Schemes and Content
Fonts and color schemes put life into the web design and the content is considered to be the backbone of the website. The popular fonts and color schemes in Dubai, UAE are the mid-size regular fonts with logo or brand identity based color scheme. However, in the year 2021 this trend is changing, the simplest fonts are taking over the fancy or stylish fonts. The color schemes are also chosen as a combination of the colors of the brand identity and contrast to it. The major focus of the color schemes and the fonts is to maximize the readability of the textual content. These days as most of the web users are coming from smartphones and mobile devices the colors and fonts are deliberately chosen to support the user experience on the mobile devices.
The content is always a king. However this perception is changing slightly, earlier there was a trend of having a content intense website, which offers tons of textual content, nowadays people are more declined towards graphics, visuals, and multimedia content rather the textual content. However, the taglines and short sales pitches can do wonders. These days’ people prefer to read short descriptions and headings, rather long articles. It is important to choose the content mindfully and make it as appealing as possible. The textual content not only should be able to describe your important sales points but it should also be able to caught attentions. Use easy-to-understand and easy vocabulary. The images, multimedia and visual content should be designed to target specific audiences rather generic. The design can force a visitor to explore the website further but it is the content that can influence their decision to hit the CTA (call-to-action) button.
Navigation and Accessibility
The website navigation and accessibility of the content is extremely important for a successful web design. There are certain ways a school website can be designed to improve the navigation and accessibility. The first and most commonly used method in Dubai, UAE is the usage of menus. There could be different designs and styles of the menus that can help to improve user experience. In 2021 the all-in-one or one-stop-shop menu type is gaining popularity is it is also the best menu type for such websites. The menu can be created in multiple layers, all the links and sub-links can be categorized in a well-organized way, the main categories can be listed on the left side in a column and the sub-categories and sub-sections can be populated in adjacent columns. This way multi-layer menu can be designed and all of the important categories and their internal links can be presented in a well-organized and easy-to-access way. The CTA or call-to-action should be
Apart from the menu there are other methods too to link internal pages or sub-pages of the school website at the homepage. The most common method is to use anchor texts and hyperlinks. Headings can be linked too and certain design elements or landmarks can be linked too to the internal pages to improve navigation. Furthermore in the internal pages and sub-pages the breadcrumbs can be used. Usually we don’t see breadcrumbs in schools or corporate sites, but these are very helpful for navigation especially for the cases when you have multiple different audiences to target and have dedicated sections on the website for those audiences. The sticky icons in the side navigation panes also provide an excellent quick access to important section or features of the website. The portals and log-in links can also be provided on the top or bottom of the web page. The navigation is an extremely crucial part of a school website as such websites usually have tons of information which can be scattered on so many different internal pages and internal sections.
SEO Friendly School Website
Another most popular trend of the year 2021 is the SEO (search engine optimization) friendly school websites. The search engines have become a very important part of our daily life for example yesterday I was trying to register and upload some documents for verification using a smartphone app, I tried for almost an hour but each time it returned some error, I looked it up in the Google, found a video and all was done in almost ten minutes. That is how much we are relying on searching and Google. Similarly when it comes to the admission of our kids, we first try to search in the internet, then we talk with our family and friends, we read reviews, see website appearance and read the history and vision of the school, and all such things before making a decision. If your school website is up-to-the-mark. You have a great web design, excellent content and everything is super-great, but when someone searches for the ‘schools in Dubai’ any such term, your website doesn’t appear in the results.
What does this mean? It means whoever is searching for schools in Google is unable to reach to your website and your potential customers/students are landing on the competitors’ websites. This mean you are completely out of the race, at least here in the search engine. This could have a huge impact on your revenue. The websites that appears in the first page or maybe in second page got more clicks, in fact almost 70 percent of the clicks are going to the websites in the top 5 results. But if you have a proper SEO friendly website, it was developed as per the SEO standards and is a completely SERO Friendly school website, it will automatically start appearing in the search results. With the passage of time, it will start climbing in the ranks and a time will come when it will be at the top of the search engine results page or SERP. Which means it could potentially take 40 to 50 percent of the traffic coming from Google and all that is without paying a single additional dime. Image how it will boost your conversions and revenue.
Detailed Footer
The footer of a website is usually the least focused place in the entire web design. In the year 2021 in Dubai and all around the UAE businesses have acknowledged the importance of the footer, businesses from different sectors, especially corporate sector are utilizing footers to boost their web designs and user experience. The school websites are no exception, these days in Dubai the schools are also enlarging their website’s footers to include more useful information. There are certain must have elements in a footer of a website such as copyright statement, links for privacy policy, terms of use, contact page and list of important products and services along with the contact details and address, etc.
However the footers are transitioning from only a bored space with bunch of links and text, to a proper design appeal. The designs are made to attract users to certain information, providing them useful links, forms, sign-in/sign-up, social media links and much more. The footers are also including the sitemaps, not the entire sitemap but a list of all major pages which is not only improving the navigation of the web design but it is also helpful for the SEO purposes. Mini galleries, lists of latest blog posts or press releases, interactive widgets and certificates or badges are also included in the footer. Such information is very helpful in improving the brand image and brand identity. Earlier the footers were consuming around 20 to 30 percent of the bottom but now a days from anywhere 60 percent to a full width footer are becoming trendy. The footer is a very useful space and studies shows a lot many users scroll to the footers to find information about the business.
Conclusion
The year 2021 is a revolutionary year in web design in Dubai. We have witnessed huge trend changes in a couple of past years. The year 2021 is also praising an entirely new design approach. The overall design language for the user interface and user experience has been transformed with the heavy usage or unconventional scrolling, full-width landing screens, and intensive use of multimedia content. There are certain trends that are dominating almost all sectors and industries however there are some web design trends that are only unique for the school websites and are also happily welcomed by the users and the schools as well. For instance, the parallax design, the micro-interactions, easy-to-navigate layered menus, intensive use of hyperlinks and internal links with various different design approaches to create business-oriented user interfaces. The above-mentioned design trends are the most effective and most popular school website design trends. You can easily build an excellent goal-oriented website for your school by following those web design Dubai trends. If you need any help or want to acquire a professional web design agency in Dubai, such as RSI Concepts, do feel free to reach us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.
Check out this: Website Trends for Businesses in 2021
