Education Data Hub
Overview
Derbyshire County Council’s vision is to enable schools to perform better for children through achieving data excellence.
The goal is for schools to be compliant, secure and effective through good data management enabled by technology.
We developed the Education Data Hub to act as a portal for services, providing information about the hub and the products that they deliver.
Our Approach
As an education resource, accessibility is an essential part of the build that we tackled at the core of the website. We ensured that we used the Education Data Hub branding guidelines in a way that included an inclusive colour scheme with a softer contrast between text and background. We also did our best to ensure that there are no harmful effects used within the design.
We compounded on this design and, in partnership with CQ Strategic Marketing we created a website that was both minimal and vibrant, with subtle background imagery and eye-catching animation.
Challenges
An Eye-Catching Informative Website
It was essential for the website to draw attention and be aesthetically pleasing, with a priority to User Experience. We were tasked with creating a network of information that was a joy for users to navigate.
Developing an Identity
The team at Derbyshire County Council needed some kind of universal identity to link pages and concepts together and provide an entity in it’s own right that could be identified immediately as the Education Data Hub.
Spreading the Word
No website is any use if nobody knows about it! Our goal is to make sure that the Education Data Hub and it’s resources can be found easily on Google and other search engines, as well as help and advise across their social media and traditional marketing strategies.
Solution
Vibrant, Dynamic Website
We developed a bright, engaging website that was still minimal and professional. We used bright colours indicative of the educational sector to draw attention to the site and it’s content, but this is balanced by the negative space and refined layout so that it does not come across garish.
This balance, re-enforced by subtle animation and dynamic elements has generated a pleasing website that is a pleasure to navigate.
Our focus on User Experience goes above and beyond simple User Interface, too – we have created pages that suggest a narrative throughout the website, creating a journey of Data Excellent for visitors. On the other side of the coin, Resources and Services are quick and easy to find.
“Data”
The team at the Education Data Hub asked us to develop an iconic visual identity in the form of a digital mascot AKA “Data” the Educational Data Hub Robot.
Data features throughout the website, with a “focus” icon on his belly to indicate different services that the EDH offer (such as Data Protection). The home page features a simple, but effective 2D animation of Data, with his belly rotating through the key areas, emulating the Journey of Data Excellence that is at the heart of the Education Data Hub.
Digital Marketing Strategy
The next stage is to embark on a digital marketing strategy, starting with and SEO Audit and then increasing the organic digital reach of the Education Data Hub.
Results
The project has successfully helped the Education Data Hub team support and educate schools in GDPR, Cyber Security and other Services providing an accessible, easy to use and dynamic website that provides information to local schools and authorities but also acts as effective sales tool driving visitors to get in touch about any services that they require.
Support
Managed Business Hosting
Our Managed Business Hosting Platform is at the forefront of technology, employing super-fast NVMe SSD’s that are up to fifty times quicker than most servers and five times quicker than the second fastest.
We push all of the Education Data Hub traffic through a Managed CDN to deliver data quicker, protect the source server and our integrated Web Application Firewall shields the website from DDoS and other attacks.
All data submitted through the website is encrypted by an SSL Certificate.
WordPress Webmaster Pro
Regular WordPress, Framework and Plugin updates keep the website running quickly and reliably with instant access to the latest features.
We monitor the website every minute of every day, checking that the site is always online and responding properly to requests.
Support Blocks – Our Hybrid Approach to Support
As an ever evolving project, support blocks allow the team at the Education Data Hub to regularly review and tweak the way that the website works without the pressure of maintaining a pipeline of work but with the power to drive regular sprints for feature development.
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