The Solanco School District
Solanco School District is a large, rural public school district that encompasses approximately 180 square miles in the southern end of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Project Services
- Information Architecture
- UI/UX
- Design & Development
- WordPress
Functional and vibrant.
A school district website has to be easy to use — both by the parents and students, but also the staff who maintains it. Metropolis guided the process from sitemap to development and listened to Solanco’s various needs and concerns. Their new website has a vastly improved navigation system, is completely content-manged in WordPress using the Gutenberg block editing system, and is much easier to maintain. We achieved a more friendlier look and feel by using a consistent color palette and lots of photos.
Mike and his team were notably thorough and professional, taking the time to understand our needs, culture, and values first. This was a creative process, and I believe what resulted was a vastly improved site—not just visually, but also functionally. I appreciated how direct their suggestions were—this feedback caused us to evaluate exactly what our needs were.
Enhanced Navigation System
Large sites need a well-organized navigation system. This starts with an updated sitemap to re-group content logically. Enhanced content areas next to the dropdowns can include latest events, news, text, or images.
Standardized UI
It’s important to have a well-designed set of layouts that the content can flow into. Consistent user interface elements (UI) helps users identify things like links and downloads across the site. Long pages allow for on-page navigation in the header.
Integrated Events Calendar
We used The Events Calendar to replacing their Google Calendar. It has color-coded categories and different views (List or Month.) We were able to style it to match the rest of the WordPress site.
The Results
Solanco School District’s site is now really easy for them to maintain and has a much more intuitive interface design for the parents, teachers, and students who use it. And it reinforces their mission and builds parent confidence in them.
Awards & Recognition
- aWWWards – Nominee
- Communicator Awards – Distinction Award
- CSS Design Award – Special Kudos award
- CSS Winner – Site of the Day
- CSS Light – Design Nominee
- Design Nominees – Design Nominee
- Indigo Design Award – Bronze Winner
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