Categories
Web Design and Development

How we created a mobile-first responsive website for an Ahmedabad school

Located in one of Ahmedabad’s fastest developing areas, Shivashish World School (SWS) is a premier co-educational school which started back in the year 1994. A charitable trust started the school with Gujarati medium but with time the school got its CBSE affiliation and introduced English medium. In the year 2021, they went through a major expansion and re-branding exercise, which included a completely new building, identity design and re-doing their digital presence across website and social media.

The school wanted a total revamp of their design and branding, so one of Ahmedabad’s best digital marketing agencies came up with a best in class website to help them achieve a complete image makeover.

The Client’s Problem

Incepted more than 28 years ago, SWS has been imparting high-quality education from kindergarten right to high school. In 2021, they set up a new world class building for their CBSE board, but realized that in the post-pandemic era, most parents were going to discover them online first. Unfortunately, their existing website did not match the scale and aesthetic of the new building. The website was also being used for two different brands, the Gujarat Board school, called Shivashish School, and the CBSE school, called SWS, creating confusion for the user.

Moreover, the old website had been designed primarily for the desktop, with its mobile version created almost as an after-thought. However, a quick look at their analytics showed that up to 90% of their unique users accessed the website through mobile devices. All of whom were being served a sub-par experience.

The school also realized that most of the things that made them unique, such as their pedagogy, amenities and most of all its teaching staff had to be showcased better!

CBSE & GBSE The history of the school as presented in old website

Solution presented by Flora Fountain

Since most parents were accessing the website from a cell phone, we decided to create a mobile-first website, a first for any school in Ahmedabad, that was dynamic and sleek. Modern design concepts like glassmorphism, neumorphism, micro animations, extensive use of swipe, and an almost app-like UI were identified to create a modern website matching the new identity of the school. In order to accomplish this, we decided to design and develop a completely new mobile-first website, which was a first for any school in Ahmedabad.

Neomorphism in the footer of the new SWS website

Phase 1: Analysis

According to research, 61% of mobile users are more likely to contact a local business if they have a mobile-friendly site. That means, more than half of the target audience, parents, would look for schools in their locality on their phones. So on the basis of the research conducted on their website usage and research on the new mobile web technologies, we listed some points to work on.

1) There was a lot of information available for parents, students, and teachers. So the information architecture of the old website needed to be fleshed out better for users to easily navigate through the website.

2) The new website had to reflect and highlight current school values, while at the same time showcasing the facilities and amenities of the new school building, the talents of its students and most importantly, its teaching staff.

3) The new website had to be Search Engine optimized, or SEO optimized, to improve the school’s reach on search engines online

4) The new website had to provide an intuitive and delightful responsive experience for all its audience, especially those accessing it through mobile devices

5) The new website had to be created on a user-friendly CMS like so the client could edit the content and images on their own going forward

Phase 2: Ideation & Implementation

Committing to a Mobile-first approach

After gathering and analyzing the data and noting that parents would be the target audience and that the site should be easy for them to use, we went ahead with our original idea to create a mobile-first website. This means that our product and design team starts by creating wireframes and mockups for mobile first. This means thinking of a more modular layout than a grid-based one. The modules can then be rearranged to create layouts for desktop and mobile.

responsive vs mobile first web design

Neumorphic, Glassmorphic, Animated

The second idea was to incorporate Neumorphism, Glassmorphism and animation in the user interface or UI. Once the wireframes were sketched, our design team created mockups using these two effects on all the various elements that make up a website, right from buttons and tabs, to images and navigation elements. Each page was painstakingly mocked up so there was no room for error while coding. A document was created for all the animation with adequate references.

To implement Neumorphism all this, the front-end team placed UI elements behind a background in CSS, to make it seem like components such as buttons are actually housed inside the background. For the frosted-glass effect of Glassmorphism, a blur effect was added to the background. Contrasting and vivid colours are used in the background to highlight the blurred transparency, giving a subtle border to the translucent objects. For animation we relied on extensive use of jQuery’s animation libraries.

Creating content through writing and photo & video shoot

Since we had put our heart and souls into designing and developing the website, we realized that we would also be the best people to create content for it. We wrote SEO-optimized content using the information provided by the client, adding all relevant meta tags and keywords on each page to target audiences in the nearby 5 km radius. Since that is the most parents are willing to travel to send their kids to school. We also realized the need for high quality photographs and images to bring this vision to life. So we conducted a shoot to get the right expressions of each child and teacher for the website. We also shot scripted videos with the children each presenting school values in an irrepressibly cute way. We overlaid sketched illustrations on some images to give them an element of storytelling. Finally, we added GIFs for each teacher to give the website a fun approachable vibe.

Testing

We extensively tested this website across top 10 mobile devices used by parents, with at least 5% of the website traffic percentage, such as Samsung Galaxy phones, Vivo, Oppo, Google Pixel, OnePlus and Apple iPhone. In addition to this we also tested it across popular desktop browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari.

Result:

And viola, just like that the new website turned out to be as awesome as we had dreamt on paper and Illustrator 🙂

Let’s take a look!

Neumorphic, Glassmorphic, Animated visuals on the new SWS website

The new website highlighted the teachers and the students in a quirky and creative way, in line with the client brief.

SWS Teachers Mobile friendly views of the new SWS website

It showcased the history of the school in a fun and more accessible way, than the usual text format.

And here is the highlight of the website! A 3-d globe showing the alumni of the school spread across the world.

Want to explore this website some more? Check it out here.

Alumni of the SWS school Mobile friendly views of the new SWS website

So this is how Ahmedabad got its mobile-first school website! Time for your brand to do the same! If your brand needs a kickass and memorable website that works equally well on mobile as it does on desktop, one of the best and most thoughtful website development companies in Ahmedabad, Flora Fountain is here for you! Drop us an email on hello@flora.ffteam.in or call 9558079502!

Categories
Social Media

Advertising on Social Media: Why you need a separate game plan

Who would have thought that the platforms created to let people share stories from their lives through pictures and videos would turn out to be such great tools for audiences to discover new products and services and for brands to find these new audiences. And the pandemic has only made it more so!

It is time to go deeper into the social media rabbit hole.

Social media marketing and social media advertising. Always knew they were different, but didn’t know who to ask? Read below for some insights from Ahmedabad’s best digital marketing agency!

First things first, social media marketing is purely organic activity, which involves posting pictures, publishing stories, responding to comments and inquiries on messages and sharing the posts in various groups and communication channels.

While social media advertising comprises all paid marketing activity on various social media platforms through the means of sponsored posts and boosts, done over and above the usual social media marketing activity such as posting and creating stories.

While there is an overlap between the two in terms of results and goals, advertising on social media is a different ball game altogether, with targeted budgets, a keener understanding of target audiences, and a smart selection of the content that should be boosted.

Because of the difference in strategy and skills required for the two, the top advertising agency in Ahmedabad suggests that a mere social media strategy or calendar does not cut it for a brand. Serious brands must have a separate game plan for the two. Read on to know why and everything else about social media advertising.

WHY ADVERTISE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media advertising is an all-encompassing format of marketing for a brand. Since social media is a place where the people are a bit chilled out, it gives marketers the opportunity to go out of their way with creativity to make their brand stand out.

The regular advertising in the digital world includes the usual suspects, like pay-per-click ads, website display ads, video popup ads, digital billboards, etc. But social media has promotions and boosts, which offers them great flexibility in tweaking the audience, its reach perimeter, the budgets, and putting a pause or restart as per the brands requirements.

Even the best digital marketing agencies in India believe that organic reach is hard to achieve, hence if a brand has the bandwidth and resources to spend, they must consider social media advertising for quick win and turn around.

HOW TO ADVERTISE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Different platforms have different ways to let businesses and individuals promote themselves and their services to a large swathe of potential customers with interests that align with what they sell.

Listed below are the various kinds of paid promotions a brand can run on different platforms.

Twitter Promotions

With Twitter Promote, the Twitter algorithm automatically promotes Tweets to the brand’s specified audience. It promotes the first 10 daily organic Tweets that pass the Twitter quality filter. It also promotes the brand account to attract new followers.

Marketeers can focus on up to 5 interests or metro locations, and let Twitter do the rest. Unfortunately, with this feature, marketers can’t choose which Tweets to promote. (That’s why creating great content on a regular basis for every platform is important).

Facebook Ads


Facebook Ads
With over 2.45 billion monthly active users, Facebook is popular across many demographics. Just as many teenagers use Facebook as their parents—and seniors are quickly catching up. With ads, brands can direct users to its Facebook Page or the website as a part of the sales funnel. One such great form of advertising is Carousel ads on Facebook timelines.

Carousel ads work well to showcase different features of a product, or to explain a step-by-step process. They’re also a great way to present multiple products or services.


Showcase a Variety of Products
Sometimes, brands can showcase a variety of products in a single carousel chain, and every picture can have a customised purchase or inquiry link. This way, it can not only be a great sales and data collection tool too.

Instagram Promotions

Instagram is most popular with millennials, they say. Well, this platform is popular with people of all generations. Instagram has millions of Gen Z and GenX too, who create and consume content in the form of posts, reels, videos and stories.

Instagram currently has over 1 billion active users, a large majority of them using the app on their mobile phones. What’s interesting is that 71% of their demographic are users who are under the age of 35, who spend an average 53 minutes per day.

And what more, post the pandemic, where online sales have taken off and crossed the stratosphere already, it was found out that 80% of consumers use Instagram to help them decide on a purchase.

Just like Facebook, brands can target their ideal viewers with customised targeting options. Create lookalike audiences, define the audience’s behaviors and activities, interests, and demographics.

Seen above is a great example of a carousel ad on Instagram, that blends in smartly with the other content on the feed of the Instagram users.

Instagram Promotions

YouTube Promotions

Let us start by sharing a startling fact about this video streaming giant. YouTube is the second most visited site on the internet, and netizens consume close to 6 hours of video content every day.

Advertising on YouTube requires a Google Ads account, using which it uniformly helps brands create ads on multiple spots on the YouTube streaming page.


YouTube Promotions
The different types of ads on YouTube include short clips that play before the actual video, banner ads that get displayed on top of the playlist and clickable links that display in the corners of the screen.

Brands can set their budget and target the desired audience on specific YouTube channels. There’s no minimum price to run an ad – and brands can change their ads, targeting and budgets at any time.

LinkedIn Boosts

LinkedIn is much more business-oriented than other social networks in this post. It offers targeting options based on professional qualifications like job title and seniority.

Single images, videos, or carousel ads are all different options for sponsored content advertising on LinkedIn.


LinkedIn Boosts
Brands that are looking to target talented individuals to join their workforce, hiring agencies that have a large number of positions to fill, or companies who wish to talk about their achievements and attract more followers whose interests align with their brand, ideally choose LinkedIn Boosts. It has been noted that boosting on LinkedIn costs way more than its peers.

Get started with Flora Fountain

The team of experienced digital advertising and social media marketing experts at Flora Fountain have paved the path to success for many local and national brands to tap into a large swathe of unexplored audiences online, especially on social media.

Drop us a line here and let us invite you over for a cup of coffee and a riveting conversation on your brand’s future online.