Grammar School Website Design - 5 sites reviewed

1. Brisbane Grammar School

http://www.brisbanegrammar.com/


Good:

• “Hero image” – tells great stories, great sales pitch for new students and their parents
  
• Extracirricular is main menu link - makes it easy to find sports info
  
• “MyGrammar” login section link - good concept
  
• Sitemap/Search/Contact secondary menu - good catchall for hard to find pages
  
• Feature panels – news, Feature panel, Events look very flexible to manage
  
• Highly accessible - homepage has no errors
  

Bad:

• Almost totally
  
• Too many main links and submenus 
• Some pages aren’t in logical sections
• Quicklinks - lazy and messy !
  
• News ticker - distracting and slow scrolling
• Not perfectly search engine optimised but not important
  

Summary and My Rating:
85%
Pretty good effort all round.  Great look dragged down by some small navigation glitches.

2. Melbourne Grammar School

http://www.mgs.vic.edu.au/



Good:

• “Hero Image” – shows students in real situations (exams etc)
• Search box
• Breadcrumb Trail on content pages
• Photo gallery

Bad:

• Over 73 accessibility errors - pretty discriminatory  
  
• Way too corporate looking 
• Extensive Use of Flash - again not very accessible
• Double Fly-out nav - lazy and browser problems
  
• Far Too many menu links
• Latest News images - some are too contrived
  
• Not perfectly search engine optimised but not important
• Secondary menus
• No favourites icon
  
• Messy
  

Summary and My Rating:
50%
Cluttered and hampered by far too many accessibility and usability issues

3. Ipswich Grammar School

http://www.ipswichgrammar.com/
Good:

• Hero message – shows students of different ages and sizes.  Welcoming look
  
• Age group navigation - sections via age group, with differentlinks for each.   Not sold on this approach, but it does address someissues.  My suggestion would be some content packages by age group (andperhaps BASC), accessed by a drop-down list
• “My IGS” – good concept groups Staff and Student Intranet,Alumni, Council and even Employment into one easy to remember section.
• Upcoming Events – a good idea to centralise events, also an RSS and iCal views could be useful
• Useful site superfooter
  

Bad:

• Age group navigation in top level menu
• Huge lists of second level links down the page
  
• News ticker
• Amateur look
• Embedded styles and messy code
• Not perfectly search engine optimised but not important
• Accessibility problems
• No breadcrumb
• No favourites icon
  

Summary and My Rating:
60%
Does the job, but has many problems

4. Geelong Grammar School

http://www.ggs.vic.edu.au/
Good:

• Looks ok, reasonably slick
  
• “GGS Life” – good catchall for leraning, sport etc
• Nice clean page markup
• Few accessibility errors
• Interesting inline links feature
• Homepage Feature panels - look reasonably flexible to manage
• Favourites icon
  

Bad:

• Navigation – no breadcrumb and menu can be confusing menu - easy to get lost
• No browser titles on content pages - bad for discoverability
• Not perfectly search engine optimised but not important
• Poor image choice in places
  

Summary and My Rating:
75%
This site has grown on me.  Some really positives, but some unforgivable mistakes as well

4. Ballarat Grammar School

http://www.bgs.vic.edu.au/
Good:

• Reasonbly well though out menu and content structure
• Image slideshow
  
• Favourites icon
• Few accessibility problems
  

Bad:

• Amateur "Frontpage" look
  
• Annoying flyout menu - can't click on main menu links
  
• News ticker is annoying
  
• Annoying sidebar on some content pages
  
• Not perfectly search engine optimised but not important
• URLs not optimised
• Slightly messy but well structured markup
  
• Text size and page width functions not really adding anything
  
• Text as images
  

Summary and My Rating:
70%
This is a functional website that does what it needs to do with only some really minor problems

4. Sydney Grammar School

http://www.sydgram.nsw.edu.au/
Good:

• #1 priority is contact information

Bad:

• Splash page - horrendous.  just finding the Enter link is a chore in itself
  
• Accessibility problems
  
• Text way too small
• Very dark
• No favicon
• No breadcrumb trail - easy to get lost
• Browser titles are non descriptive
• Page links change - inconsistent
• Too many page links
• Tries too hard to differentiate age groups/subsites
• Unnecessary jump lists on some pages
• Amateur look
  

Summary and My Rating:
30%
This is a very poor website for a school with such a great name

Conclusions

There is quite a lot of variation in the quality of grammar school sites.  Some obviously amateur, others quite professional.  There are also some complex navigation issues to deal with.  I have yet to find one that comes close to perfect, however.

If you know of any good ones, let me know by commenting below and I'll see if I can add a review at a future date ....

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