Optimist International School is a public school from Hoofddorp for children aged 4 to 11. Together with our partners, we helped them build their own identity after a split, including a new website. Manon from Optimist International School tells you more!
Realizing a successful split and creating a unique identity in the process.
Expats
Manon: "OIS started as part of a Dutch school, but began an international track in 2018. We soon realized that there were many differences between the Dutch and International Optimist schools." They therefore wanted to distance themselves; new building, own finances, and a new website with matching branding. The current website didn't properly show who they were, and there was a need to thoroughly address the website and branding. Get Interactive and Copper Design started working together with OIS!
For developing a new brand identity and matching logo, we engaged our partner Copper Design. The concept is based on drawing and aligns well with a child's mindset. A dot is a dot, but also a green world (the international character of the school), a watermelon, a traffic light, an apple, ... That's why the brand identity is based on a child's playfulness.
Every drawing starts with a first touch between pencil and paper. They visualized this with a dot. The school also uses the IPC teaching method (International Primary Curriculum) on which 'connecting dots' is based. For this reason, orange, yellow, and blue dots are used alongside green.
Manon was pleased about the communication between the different parties. "The communication between Copper Design, Get Interactive, and Epurple went very well, and it was clear who did what. Epurple joined as the last party as a logical next step."
Together with our two partners, Epurple and Copper Design, we started working to help Optimist International School with their own identity and look & feel. Get Interactive developed a brand new custom website that matched the brand identity developed by our partner Copper Design. The website got a fresh look and handy modules to keep information up to date.
"Because the project wasn't just about a website, but also about rebranding, it was very nice that Pim brought in Copper Design and later also Epurple. He was very clear in summarizing what we exactly wanted, what Get Interactive could handle themselves, and where they brought in other specialists," Manon explains.
Optimist International School wanted to generate more leads and increase visitor traffic to the website. Our partner Epurple got to work to help them with an extensive SEO & migration audit. Subsequently, successful Google and Bing campaigns were set up to bring visitors lower in the 'funnel' to the website. The goal of these SEA campaigns was to generate relevant and quality leads in the short term. The monthly goals were amply achieved with these campaigns.
Additionally, research was conducted on where opportunities lie in terms of content and a training was provided for this. OIS can now write and publish targeted information themselves thanks to this content training to generate more organic visitors.
A good way to stand out from the competition is the high ratings that OIS consistently receives; both children and parents are very positive about the school. That's why we prominently added Google Reviews to the homepage in the website design, and the annual satisfaction survey is also directly accessible. That radiates trust!
In the calendar module, vacations, open days, meetings, and study days are clearly visible, and with the news module, announcements and notifications can be posted on the website. With these modules, OIS can easily add new events or news and thus keep the website up to date with minimal effort.
To further help Optimist International School establish their own style, we recorded an introduction video for the school. This can be viewed directly via the homepage and gives parents and future students a playful look inside the school.
"It was just a very good collaboration with good energy. It was also very clear what was expected of us. That's sometimes different with other companies." Manon is most positive about the homepage; "That's where we get the most comments, that it's very attractive and different. People find it clear and can quickly find what they need. We also haven't changed the website since Get Interactive worked on it, which says something."
"When we started designing the website, we had 100 children at our school, that's now already 270. We keep growing, as a public school we're of course dependent on what the municipality offers you. But we know we can improve even more. We're working on that now, there's still a lot to gain with news and blogs. That will be the next phase."
Would you like to know more about this case, or do you want to get started just like Optimist International School? Contact us, Pim will be happy to tell you more.
