Ex-student launches innovative new website for Runshaw College

A Leyland-based college has had its website revolutionized and relaunched by a former student, resulting in a user interface that is the first of its kind within the local education market.

The digital agency was selected to complete the work for Runshaw via a competitive tender process that ran nationally. Commencing in August this year, the 12 week consultation, design and build process was project managed by a task group within the college, in close collaboration with the agency.

The tone, style and look of the website was a collaborative process comprising ideas from the project team, staff, students and other stakeholders.

The site has been built on WordPress, the world’s most popular Content Management System (CMS), which allows the team at Runshaw to update the site with ease. Soap integrated bespoke programming into the back end of the website, including the automation of manual tasks and syncing of data across systems, saving the College’s IT team’s time and resources.

"Courses created in our Student Information System are now automatically imported into the website upon creation, forming a seamless process. We now also have the ability to syndicate news items and events on the website with our newly developed Communications Portal and our Staff Portal so that staff and parents are kept abreast of the very latest news as it happens.

Another key element of the rebuild was ensuring the site was fully optimised for all devices, as 75% of all users of the previous website were viewing it from a smartphone / tablet device.