A Custom Website Design for Whitby School

The Whitby School is an innovative private Nursery through Grade 8 school that helps students become passionate learners and global citizens through a unique combination of the International Baccalaureate and the Montessori education.

Whitby came to Media Junction because they wanted a HubSpot COS website so they could better take advantage of inbound marketing in their marketing pipeline. Their goals were to:

• Showcase what Whitby is like on a day-to-day basis for the parents, students, teachers and staff.
• Improve the website user experience to make it easier for website visitors to find the information they need. 
• Track and engage their website visitors more effectively with the HubSpot tools.

Here are the major features of the custom website design:

The overall website design focuses primarily on helping site visitors experience what it is like for students to attend the Whitby School.  

Here were the three objectives we had for the custom website redesign for Whitby School:

Goal 1: Make the Website More Intuitive 

We worked with Whitby to streamline their website and to identify target keywords their personas would be searching for when considering a private school for their child. 

The objectives for the site architecture were to:

• Make the website layout and navigation intuitive so parents can easily find the information they need. 
• Focus the sitemap on keywords prospective parents search for when looking for a private school.
• Showcase resources to help prospective parents decide on the right private school for their child. 

Goal 2: Communicate the "Whitby Experience"

In our conversations with the Whitby team, they told us that parents say over and over that visiting the school made a huge impact on their decision to send their child to Whitby. Parents are impressed by their innovative teaching methods, personalized learning and Whitby's focus on educating the whole child.

It was important for the website redesign to bring the experience of attending Whitby to life.

We went into the website redesign with the goal of grabbing the attention of prospective parents by making the Whitby School website a visually exciting experience. We worked with a videographer to record a "Day in the Life" video for each level of education at Whitby and then fully-integrated the videos into the website using Wistia.

When parents visit the Children's House (preschool), Lower School (elementary school) and Upper School (middle school) pages, they see the beginning of a background video featuring children of that age going about their day at Whitby. Parents can click on each video to listen to a Whitby student talk about their experience at the school. The pages are also set-up to showcase the Whitby experience by featuring photos of real students learning in the classroom.

The website's focus on the Whitby Experience was not just aimed at prospective parents. We also worked on a culture section featuring videos and teacher stories to help Whitby attract top educators. 

Goal 3: Connect Whitby's Veracross Information Management System with their HubSpot Website

An important part of the custom website design was integrating the new HubSpot website with Veracross, an information management system that Whitby uses to connect with parents of current and prospective students.

By building a custom JavaScript application, we were able to:

• Create a searchable staff directory that is dynamically updated on the Whitby website whenever changes are made to the profiles of educators and staff on Veracross.
• Synchronize parent and prospective parent contact information between Veracross and HubSpot.
• Set-up Veracross to trigger HubSpot workflows for contacts that originate in Veracross.

As a result, Whitby School is able to connect their school information management system with their HubSpot website.

Website Results

In the five months since launch, the Whitby website has had a 25% increase in organic traffic. They have also seen a 550% increase in leads from organic traffic.  

Overall, the new Whitby School website now successfully showcases the unique Whitby experience and makes it easy for parents and prospective parents to move through the site.

Here are some before and after photos of the Whitby site:

See the full Whitby School website.