Putnam Indian Field School

I was pleased to find that Union Street was an incredibly professional, organized, creative and dedicated firm in the interactive media space. They were budget-minded, delivering high quality product and providing an equally good working experience. If you are a small to medium sized organization, I can’t think of a better partner to develop your website.

Objective:

When the Putnam Indian Field School first approached USM, their site was dated and hard to navigate. The goal was to create a site that had a contemporary design that appealed to both children and adults while also keeping the navigation easy to use for parents of accepted and prospective students. In addition, the site needed to be adaptable for future changes and easily updateable by PIFS staff members/teachers.

The web site also had multiple audiences: For prospective parents, it needed to encourage them to send their children to PIFS by clearly communicating the school’s missing. For existing parents, the site needed to display images of their children’s lives at school and provide easy access to important information such as school closings, lunch menus and extracurricular program calendars.

Solution:

• The navigation of the old site was reworked to accommodate new materials the PIFS team wished to include on the site and make them easy to find
• A password protected classroom section was developed so that only staff, teachers, and parents/guardians of current students would have access to field trip schedules, information about individual students, and classroom photo galleries.
• USM’s Creative Director generated several iterations of the site that combined the color scheme, imagery, and contemporary yet appropriately themed design the PIFS team envisioned
• A comprehensive content worksheet was produced for the team with content harvested from the old site. In places where new pages had been added, suggestions of what to
• USM also created a searchable teacher directory so that parents of current students can easily find contact information for their children’s teachers.
• Creation of the site within the WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) web editor, ensured that teachers and staff at Putnam Indian Field School could easily update the content on the site, including photo galleries, downloadable PDF’s, and additional pages.
• Training sessions empowered the PIFS staff to be able to maintain their site with support from USM after launch on an as needed basis only.
• USM created new email accounts @pifs.net using Google Mail for teachers and staff at PIFS to enhance the professional feel of the school
• USM communicated regularly via phone, email and in person through out the development process, despite the 300 mile distance from Burlington, VT to Greenwhich, CT.

Working with USM has been a dynamic partnership - they bring a wealth of experience, knowledge and creativity to the table.  Combine that with their ability to provide a stellar product in a timely manner.  We are extremely pleased!

Binney Huffman
Board of Trustees
Marketing and PR Committee Chairman
Technology/Communication Chairman