The brief.
Hampstead Hill is a London nursery and pre-prep school. The parents researching it are making one of the most emotional purchasing decisions there is, usually in the evening, usually on a phone, usually with other schools open in the next tabs.
The brief was to lead with the school itself, the children, the grounds and the ethos, and keep the route to visiting and applying visible from every screen. And because a school site is not only for prospective families, it also had to work as the place current parents check all year round: news, events and school information in one home.
What we did.
- Put the school film where the brochure used to be.
A short video tour sits directly under the welcome, because thirty seconds of real classrooms beats any amount of prose about nurturing environments.
- Organised the site the way parents think.
Nursery, Pre-Prep, School Life, Academic, Sports, Future Schools: the sections mirror the questions parents actually arrive with, including the one about where children go next.
- Kept admissions one tap away.
Apply and visit actions stay present throughout, without turning a school site into a sales page.
What shipped.
- Admissions-first structure with persistent apply and visit routes
- Video tour placed front and centre
- Section-by-section school life, academic and sports pages
- News and events kept simple enough to actually update
What it does now
The site does the quiet work a school site should: it reassures prospective families, it shows rather than claims, and it never loses the path to a visit. Just as importantly, it stays useful long after a place is accepted, as the page parents come back to through the year for news, events and school information. Admissions outcomes are the school's to share.