What to expect during your CDD web site development

Welcome to SchoolStatus! 

We're happy you selected us to be your web content management provider. The deployment of a web site can be a daunting process. Whether you are a seasoned web builder or a first-timer that was selected to head up the project, we have you covered. This is what we do and we'll be your guide. Along the way, we will suggest best-practices and recommendations to keep the project on track. Click here to understand our "best-effort" policy.

You have an entire web team on this end

We've assembled the best team on our end to bring your web site to fruition efficiently, and successfully! We won't let you fail. Your project manager, or PM for short, has assembled the best team, that includes a designer, a developer and possibly a few other team members based on the scope of work to be done.

Your first assignment

You will receive an introduction email from your project manager (PM) that covers some initial items in our process that you can handle before the project kick-off call. If you arrive on the project kick-off having accomplished these initial items, we'll be well underway! However, don't worry if you can't, or if you instead generate some questions. That is the point. We can answer those questions on our call. Below are some tasks that we hope you'll try to handle before the call. 

The decision-maker: Who on your team has the final say on things? This person should be identified before our kick-off call. If one member of your committee wants landing pages to be handled one way, and others have a different idea, who will have the final say? These types of decisions should be made and then given to your SchoolStatus project manager by the decision-maker. Help us help you keep the project on track by making your SchoolStatus PM clear on who to take direction from.

Questionnaire: You and your stakeholders should meet and discuss the questions we ask on our questionnaire. Having clear answers before our kick-off call will help make the call go smooth. If you can't complete the questionnaire until we have our kick-off call, that is fine, but we do want to get it early on so that our actions will align with your goals every step of the way.

Imagery: Help us make your site look great by providing us your best quality imagery. You can share via Google Drive, or we can show you how to upload it to your staged website for us to get from there. 

Logos and Branding: Do you have a branding guide or style-guide? Please share it with us. It would be nice to have it for our kick-off call. Our design team wants to make sure that any effort you have already spent on making your brand great... is carried out on your new web site. Logos, colors, fonts and even your mission are all important as we embark on your new web site project.

Training: By the time we publish your architecture from Sitebuilder, we will be ready to train you and any other publishers working on your site in the page editing tools. We first provide you the Basic Publisher Training that will get you up to speed editing pages. As your team generates questions or runs into obstacles, they can make a list of items that they want to cover in a live training webcast with our support team. Scheduling time internally for training makes sure your key personnel are available when its time... keeping the project on schedule. Training is ongoing... your team can submit support tickets directly to our support team even while you work with your PM on upper-level items. To ensure your launch is on-time, begin entering your site's content the moment your site architecture published.

Content is key!

The content on your web site is the main focus. It's what people are coming to see. Without quality imagery, verbiage, videos, and graphics, no amount of good design will do it justice. We can't stress how important it is that you bring good content to the table. One of the best things you can do to prepare right now is to start preparing your new content. Weed out old content and add any new content that is important. For typical CDD's, only the last two fiscal years of documents need to be brought over. Our team will help you migrate your content from your current live website, but if there are new pages to be added, we can help you do that during the architecture process. We'll get you trained in the page editor so that you can begin to add new content and massage the old content that our team is pulling over and positioning for you.

When building out your website architecture in Sitebuilder, it's important to understand that the SchoolStatus migration team WILL ONLY migrate the pages that we create in Sitebuilder. These links become part of the website worksheet that they will use as the blue-print of pages they have to find and migrate. You are in charge of adding other pages later as needed. Just ask your project manager if you are unclear about anything.  

ADA Accessibility

Most websites still do not conform to the latest ADA standards. More and more, visually or audibly-impaired users are hitting your website with special readers. The thing is, those readers only work well if the content on your website was prepared with accessibility in mind. This adds another layer of complexity to your website development. See the attached SchoolStatus ADA Service Plan for more information.

Of course, your web site is never really complete. It is a constantly changing marketing tool that may need to change to best reflect your school. Don't let small details hold up things like usability, good design, and your overall message. The SchoolStatus platform is made to allow you to refine content over time.

What time commitment should you expect?

You only get out what you put into something. Creating a new website can be a big feat, especially if you have a big web site. It's important to consider that the amount of time you put into the process will not only affect the final outcome of your site but also your launch date. Your SchoolStatus project manager is here to help keep things on track, but the launch date of your web site is completely in your hands.

Customers with the most successful web sites spend about 4-7 hours per week during the web site project. The more time you put in during the process, the better your outcome will be... and possibly will even reduce the time to launch. From the initial kick-off call to your web site launch, it typically takes us 6-8 weeks to build and launch a CDD website, but that time can be cut in half if we have a reasonable amount of your decision-making focus!

Plan to spell out expectations to your project manager on the kick-off call. We're genuinely interested in creating the best project plan that works for your team.