What an Art School Website Needs

What the site is actually for

An art school website serves two audiences at once, and in September both arrive in the same week.

Parents want an after-school class for a seven-year-old who draws on everything, at a time that fits around hockey practice, starting this month.

Adults want an evening course in painting or clay, at their level, with a teacher whose work they admire.

Both decide quickly, because classes fill quickly, and both are usually on a phone. The site's job is to get each into the right class before they give up and call.

The questions both groups ask

• What is taught, in words a beginner understands.
• Who it is for: the age range or the experience needed.
• When it runs: day, time, start date and number of weeks.
• What is included, and what students bring themselves.
• Who teaches it, and what their own work looks like.
• Whether there is space, and what happens if there is not.

The fifth is the one adults weigh most. An adult choosing a painting course is choosing a teacher, and a biography without the teacher's own paintings asks them to take the most important thing on trust.

Children and adults on separate paths

Children's and adult classes are chosen differently. Parents compare ages, times and supervision; adults compare subjects, levels and teachers.

Give each its own starting page, linked from the top of the home page: classes for children and teens, and classes for adults. A list mixing both makes everybody read past half of it.

Sort the children's page by age, then day; the adult page by subject, then level, with a line on what each level expects.

Camps belong with the children's classes, on their own page: Pro-D days when schools close, spring break and summer, each with dates and drop-off and pick-up times.

Term dates and the class listing

Every class listing needs the same facts in the same order: name, age or level, day and time, first and last date, number of sessions, price, materials fee, instructor and room.

List the dates without class too. A fall term often skips Thanksgiving and Remembrance Day, and parents want to know which weeks are missing before they pay.

Put the term calendar on its own page as text: start and end dates, holidays, make-up dates, and when next term's registration opens.

Materials, said plainly

Materials cause more email than anything else on an art school site. For each class, say what the fee covers, what students bring, and where to buy it.

A supply list should be specific: sizes, quantities, the brand where it matters, what a beginner can substitute to spend less, and what to wear.

For clay, explain firing. Work has to dry and be fired, usually twice, so finished pieces come home weeks after the class that made them.

A worked example

A community art school in a converted storefront teaches drawing, painting and clay to children after school and to adults in the evenings, about thirty classes a term.

Registration ran on a PDF form, emailed back with an e-transfer. Each evening in September, the office checked the forms against a spreadsheet of class sizes by hand.

Classes overfilled when two forms crossed, the waitlist lived in a notebook, and parents emailed daily to ask about places.

The site described the classes well but could not say whether any had room, so every question about space came to the office at the busiest time of year.

Registration moved to an online system that knows each class's size. Listings show places left or a waitlist button, payment happens on registration, and a withdrawal offers the place to the next family by email.

The notebook went. The waitlists also showed which classes could carry a second section next term.

Registration and waitlists

Whatever system takes registrations should know each class's capacity and stop at it. Two families should never both be told they have the last place.

When a place opens, the next person on the waitlist should be offered it by email with a deadline, and if they do not take it, it should move on without anyone at the office remembering to do it.

Ask what the instructor must know and no more: the child's name and age, allergies and medical notes, emergency contacts, and who may pick the child up.

Let parents add a second child without retyping the family's details. It saves more time on the form than anything else.

Instructors and their own work

Each instructor needs a short page: what they teach, how long they have taught, and a handful of their own pieces, credited and dated.

Adults choose courses by teacher more than by title; parents care more about years of teaching children.

Link each class to its instructor, and each instructor to the classes they teach this term.

Photographs of the studio and student work

Photograph the studio as it is used: the light, the tables, the wheels and kiln, the shelves of work drying. A first-time visitor wants to picture the room.

Student work shows what the school does better than anything, and it needs permission. Ask on the registration form, in a separate unticked box, whether work may be shown and the student photographed.

For children, show work without surnames, and photograph hands and work rather than faces unless a parent has agreed to faces specifically.

Keep a record of who agreed to what, and take a piece down promptly when anyone asks.

The counter-case

A small studio can start with less.

One instructor teaching four adult classes from a home studio, with students who return every term, may need only a page per term, a supply list and a simple way to register.

But any school with more classes than one person can track from memory needs listings that show space, and registration that stops at capacity.

What to build first

1. Split the class pages into children and adults.
2. List every class with the same facts in order.
3. Publish the term calendar as text.
4. Write a supply list for each class.
5. Move registration online with capacity and waitlists.
6. Show each instructor's own work beside their classes.
7. Ask photo permission on every registration form.

Step five is the one that gives the office its September back. Every other gap costs an email or a call; registration that cannot see class sizes turns the first weeks of term into paperwork.

Showing work so that a visitor can judge it quickly is covered in what a videographer website needs.

Frequently asked questions

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