As we discovered in SchoolCEO’s original 2024 research “What Parents Want,” two-thirds of families say they prefer to learn school-related information for the first time from the school's website. While the communications team at Boone County Schools in Kentucky was researching school website best practices, this fact surprised them. "We viewed our website as a library—a repository for long-term information,” explains Chad Brady, Boone County’s media systems coordinator and webmaster. “But we found that families were actually using it like the old phone directory: pulling it out to look up anything."

Given that their families were spending so much time on their website and relying on it so heavily for information, Boone County realized they needed to add more images. After all, “photos tell the story better than words,” says Brady. At the same time, they needed to make the writing clearer and more detailed so that families wouldn't have to call or email schools for clarification. Boone County’s campus websites are controlled at the building level, with many school buildings not having a dedicated full-time communicator. So in order to fix up not only the district's main homepage, but also all of the school websites, Boone County provided hands-on training to all their school website administrators.

Beyond these practical changes, the Boone County team knew they also needed to pay more attention to how the website made families and other stakeholders feel. While traditional media tends to focus on negative or scandalous events, the team decided the website needed to feel like a safe and upbeat space for visitors. Now, their website Live Feed serves as a counterpoint to any negative news coverage. It’s filled with positive stories that ensure their online presence reflects the great things happening inside their physical buildings. In this way, they created a warm and welcoming environment for visitors to their site. 

Maître d’ or not, when you walk through the front door of a restaurant, you expect it to look like a restaurant. If you walked in and discovered it had no food or tables, you’d feel confused and frustrated. Similarly, your homepage is the front door to your school or district website. Your users don’t want to enter and immediately become confused about how your website works. Instead, they want to understand the layout of your website based on their own thousands of experiences visiting websites before. 

Research backs this up. In a 2025 study published by international business journal Electronic Markets, respondents rated homepages most positively when they paired traditional, expected webpage design with clear messaging. The study also found that users expected and even preferred a few key features when viewing a website—a prominent top-corner logo, central banner and standard navigation menu. This was especially true for busy or preoccupied users, like your average guardian on a school night. 

Of course, providing a strong website experience means providing everyone with the same ease of use, including people with disabilities. It means ensuring that any visitor can access your content in their home language. But it also means making sure any information your stakeholders need is not only present on your website, but easy to find. 

How do you know what your community wants and whether or not they’re able to find it? Website analytics and AI can help you discover what paths are most common for your website users. For example, if you have a chatbot, you should be able to see what your stakeholders are asking, giving you real-time data on the most common questions. Once you know what those queries are, make sure the answers are clear and easy for any user to find—with or without the chatbot’s help. 

To further assist parents navigating their site, Boone County recently added a website chatbot to efficiently answer general questions and route more complicated inquiries to the correct staff members. They’re planning a review this summer to analyze the trends in their data—and determine how to adjust their website to better accommodate their users. 

When considering website analytics, the question is always the same: “How can we use this data to reduce friction on our website so that people can get to the information they need in fewer clicks?” This means that your chatbot can contribute to a feedback loop where you can continually tailor your website to users’ greatest needs.

High-end restaurants don’t design their interiors themselves. They hire professionals who can pull together many different elements like furniture and lighting to evoke certain feelings. They also want to set that design apart from every other restaurant in the biz. For example, a restaurant with an adventurous cuisine may have exotic art or linens to reflect the food they serve. 

In the same way, your school or district website should be a reflection of your particular attributes and values. But how can it appear familiar enough to be user-friendly while also standing out from the competition? One school that has done this well is Ohio's Grant Career Center (GCC). They have also recently employed a chatbot on their website—with a twist. If you visit their homepage, you’ll be quickly greeted by their chatbot, Sunny, an online representation of GCC’s resident therapy dog. Digital Content Coordinator Randy Dorsey wanted to implement a chatbot that felt aligned to the rest of the center’s warm and friendly brand. Because the center doesn’t have a traditional mascot like a lot of schools, Dorsey had to think outside the box. That’s when he realized: “Everybody loves a dog.”

GCC had a few major goals they wanted to accomplish with Sunny. Like Boone County, they hoped that the chatbot would make information easier to find and help reduce front office calls. At the same time, though, they wanted families’ experiences with the chatbot to feel just as personal and friendly as a call to the front office. As a chatbot persona, Sunny helped accomplish both. 

To fuel this warmth, Dorsey had teachers write bios of themselves and include details that might be interesting to the real Sunny. One teacher wrote that he nearly always had enchiladas for lunch and another mentioned that she often went hiking with her own two dogs. If he’s asked about these teachers, Sunny will report these cute, personal details and add that he too wishes he could have some enchiladas. 

Simply put, Sunny is a success. Families are using the chatbot more for questions, and the front office is receiving fewer calls as a result. It’s had such a positive response that real-life Sunny is now a celebrity—not just at GCC, but in the wider community. In this age of school choice, that’s the kind of brand recognition most districts only dream of.  

When executed well, your digital experience becomes like an evening at a nice restaurant. Visitors feel welcome, confident they’ll find something they want, and enchanted by its unique charm. Whether at a restaurant or on a website, great service considers the guests’ point of view, makes it clear from the first 30 seconds what it has to offer, and then delivers.