Building Something Together: The Inverness High School Website
At Yellow Cherry, we think the best digital projects happen when everyone has a chance to shape them.
That was very much the case with our work with Inverness High School. Over the past year, our team worked alongside school staff and students to design, develop and launch a brand-new website with collaboration built into the process from start to finish.
This project was about more than creating a new website. We wanted to give students the chance to get involved in a real digital project, understand the thinking behind it and build practical skills they could continue to use long after launch.
Starting with design and listening
Like all good website projects, we started by getting to know the school, its audiences and what the new website needed to do.
From there, our team developed the initial designs and shared them with the people who would actually be using the site – including the students.
We invited students to explore the designs, tell us what they liked and, importantly, what they thought could work better. Their feedback gave us a different perspective and helped us refine the designs before moving into development.
It was also a chance for students to see an important part of our design process first-hand. Building a great website isn’t just about making something look good. It’s about understanding who you’re designing for, testing your ideas, listening to feedback and being willing to make changes.
Their ideas became part of that process.
From feedback to development
With feedback gathered from across the school, our team moved into development, turning the agreed designs into a working website.
Throughout the build, we stayed closely connected with the school team, sharing progress, gathering feedback and making adjustments along the way.
That collaborative approach meant the website wasn’t something created behind the scenes and handed over at the end. The school community had a voice throughout the project, from those early design conversations right through to the final stages before launch.
And while launching a website is always a big milestone, we didn’t want that to be the end of the story.
Building skills along the way
A key part of the project was helping students develop the confidence and practical skills to work with the website themselves.
Some of the Yellow Cherry team delivered hands-on training sessions, introducing students to the tools and processes involved in managing a live website.
Students learned how to use the visual page builder, manage content through the website dashboard, work with page layouts, edit and publish news posts and manage the document library.
Rather than watching us demonstrate, they could get involved, try things for themselves and ask questions along the way. It gave them a glimpse into the kind of work that happens every day in the digital industry (and, more importantly, practical experience they can build on!)
We also created a series of training videos for students and staff to return to whenever they need a refresher. That means the learning doesn’t stop when the training session ends, and the school has resources to help more people confidently manage and develop the website over time.
Ready for launch
After design, feedback, development and training, it was time to put the new Inverness High School website live.
For us, a successful launch isn’t only about how the finished website looks. We want the whole process to feel collaborative, straightforward and well supported – so it was brilliant to receive this feedback from the school:
“From start to finish, Sarah and her team were fantastic.”
“Their communication was excellent; they were incredibly approachable and always took the time to listen to our ideas and requirements.
What really stood out was how accommodating Sarah and her team were, particularly when it came to last-minute changes and requests. Nothing ever seemed like too much trouble, and everything was handled quickly, efficiently and professionally.
The finished website looks fantastic, is easy to navigate and provides a much more effective platform for communicating with pupils, parents, staff and the wider community.
A huge thank you to Sarah and the whole Yellow Cherry team for making what could have been a complicated process so straightforward and enjoyable.”
That last point means a lot to us. Websites can involve a lot of moving parts, but our job is to make the process feel as simple as possible – listening, communicating clearly and being there when things inevitably change along the way.
More than a website
We’re really pleased to have been able to support Inverness High School and its wider community through the project.
Yes, the end result is a new website – but we’re just as pleased that students had the opportunity to contribute ideas, challenge designs, learn new tools and experience some of the steps involved in taking a digital project from an initial idea through to launch.
A big thank you to everyone at Inverness High School who shared their time, ideas, feedback and enthusiasm along the way. We hope the new website serves the school community well for many years to come.
And if you’re thinking about what your own organisation’s website could do better, you can find out more about how we approach website design and development at Yellow Cherry.