What we did
Overview
Since 1928, Bryanston has been a pioneering and award-winning UK-based co-educational boarding and day school for pupils aged 3-18, set in over 400 acres of Dorset countryside.
Launch website
Website Design
Bryanston came to Fhoke with an outdated website built with a cookie-cutter theme on the e4education platform. With a new marketing team and strategy that aimed for exponential growth in under two years, it was hugely important to the school to look outside the regular school site builder agencies to help tell its story and highlight not just the pioneering education it delivers but also the lives of its students. Working closely with the marketing team at Bryanston, we created a new site from Pre-Prep to Sixth Form to complement the visual storytelling with punchy and bold headings to capture the user’s attention and convey the school’s vision, enhanced with movement for an interactive journey through the pages.
Website Development
Since 2008, we have built 95% of our websites on WordPress, so it was the only and natural choice for Bryanston. Its unlimited power and flexibility made it the ideal CMS for managing a huge number of pages and integrating with third-party platforms. From integrations with SOCS calendars and a custom predictive search with the Relevanssi plugin to a unique admissions calculator and journey tool for onboarding parents/students, Bryanston’s site combines aesthetic appeal with practical functionality. In addition to the school’s website, we are currently working with the marketing team to incorporate several third-party systems and create a centralised, single online store where the school can sell tickets for events and summer camps, as well as school merchandise and accessories.
“Bryanston is a unique and creative school. We therefore wanted to partner with a web design agency that totally understood and embraced our brand and had the creative flair to build something truly distinctive, alongside first-class user experience. We also wanted to use Wordpress rather than one of the out-of-the-box proprietary solutions that dominate the independent schools market. Fhoke have been a delight to work with, offering creativity, experience, patience, flexibility and solid project management. Highly recommended!”
Result
Since launch, we have doubled the site’s traffic from 10,000 to 20,000 visits per month and increased dwell time threefold. With a stand-out bespoke design, Bryanston now boasts one of the most recognised websites in the UK for independent schools. The new website has delivered everything the marketing team required and more, with admissions increasing in under six months compared to the previous period. The entire project has been one of Fhoke’s most successful re-designs.
