Chapter Three converted a rigid, restrictive website into a modern, flexible Drupal 8 platform for Gateway Public Schools. Gateway partnered with Chapter Three, using all of our services to help them to tell their story. Offering high-level high school and middle school education, Gateway has been, and continues to be, a model of excellence in the public charter school realm. Chapter Three is ecstatic to have the opportunity to collaborate with the great thinkers at Gateway to better serve the leaders of tomorrow.
“We love the new site. It’s so much easier to use than our old site. Entering photos and content is so much simpler and quicker now.”
– Meg Orciari, Director of Communications, Gateway Public Schools
Maintaining Unique Identities Within a Cohesive Whole
Seeking to increase enrollment and boost fundraising initiatives, Gateway needed a public-facing website to reflect its excellence as a whole as well as in its individual schools. We unified three fragmented websites into a single Drupal site that tells powerful stories through strong photography. Each school and Gateway as a whole maintain their own identity through unique accent colors.
Conveying Excellence Through Flexible, Responsive Design
Gateway’s desire to break out of the unresponsive, mobile-unfriendly box of FinalSite was an excellent opportunity to leverage our tried and true Slice Template approach. Slices empower Gateway staff to use specific layouts to target specific audiences and provided a cohesive solution for an organization with multiple identities and priorities. The new site benefits faculty, students, parents, and prospective students by reducing administrative time and providing easy access to information in a modern presentation. The responsive design is a huge help for always-on-the-go kids and parents and demonstrates Gateway’s modernity and progressive thinking.
“A student said the website is ‘hella lit’ - I don’t know what that means, but I think it’s good.”
– Meg Orciari, Director of Communications, Gateway Public Schools
Not Just a Pretty Face
Unlike many brochure sites, Gateway’s site provides students, families, community members and partners relevant utilitarian resources that require minimal clicks. The new website not only allows Gateway’s audience to easily find schedules, forms, and waivers, it also invites them to get involved and donate directly.
Content Creation and Editing Support
Gateway’s legacy site had wordy, redundant copy that was too technical and failed to engage the site’s audience. Our editorial team worked closely with Gateway stakeholders to use more marketing-based language, condense the copy and increase user engagement. We uncovered and refined Gateway’s organizational tone and then re-wrote streamlined copy in that voice. Our editorial team worked closely with our design team to write headlines, sub-headlines, captions and more tailored to the new design and associated content slices.
Indispensable Project Management
Chapter Three has a top-notch project management team with decades of experience managing a wide range of web projects. The entire Gateway project was overseen by a dedicated project manager who served as the single point of contact from inception to closure and ensured continuity and flow. Thorough project planning included success metrics, resource allocation, scheduling and much more. Ongoing monitoring of budget, quality and timeline was critical to the project’s success.
“The project management that Chapter Three provided was one of the most beneficial parts of the project. The schedules, organization and reminders kept our team on track made our website project a success.”
– Meg Orciari, Director of Communications, Gateway Public Schools
An All Around Success
At Chapter Three, we define success as achieving the concrete objectives and goals that we determine with the client at the beginning of a project. Staying on schedule and within budget and delivering quality work are critical to a successful project. Evenly more importantly, we define success by a project that ends with a happy client. We accomplished it all on this project, delivering an excellent website on time, in budget, to a very happy client.
“Success is to us is effectively communicating what Gateway is all about to our prospective and current constituents.”
– Meg Orciari, Director of Communications, Gateway Public Schools
