In January we had the pleasure of launching a new website for St. Anne School, a PreK–8th grade Catholic school located on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. The new site captures what families who know St. Anne already love; the warmth of the community, the depth of the academic programs, and a faith-filled environment where every student is known and valued.
St. Anne School has been educating students and serving the Seattle community since 1923; over a century of faith, learning, and service. Conveying that rich history with a modern web presence is the kind of work we love doing here at OlyWeb.
The original website (left) and the new website (right) launched in January 2026
Defining Goals
We started by sitting down with the staff at St. Anne to identify what the new site needed to accomplish. The priorities included giving prospective families a compelling, immersive sense of what St. Anne is all about, making information easier to find and navigate for current families, and building a foundation that will serve the school well for years to come.
Among the key goals we set out to achieve:
- Engaging video and photography paired with a modern, polished design that reflects the school’s identity and brings its mission to life
- Reorganized navigation and content structure for a better user experience
- Richer content covering academics and school programs in greater depth
- Integration with social media, Mailchimp, and Google Calendar to make information discovery intuitive
- A dedicated Family Portal with password-protected resources and an automated volunteer hours tracking system
Bringing the School to Life with Video and Photography
One of the primary improvements in the new site is its emphasis on visual storytelling. St. Anne is a warm, vibrant school community, and we wanted visitors to feel that from the moment they land on the home page. The new design features engaging video and rich photography woven throughout the site, from the hero section to interior pages, giving families a genuine sense of the school’s culture, faith life, and day-to-day experience.
The home page and inner pages now feature full width background images
giving a more immersive experience of the school.
When approaching a school homepage, we often ask the same question: what would you highlight on a first tour with a new family? That question shaped how we structured the home page content, anchoring it around the school’s mission, its Catholic identity, its community spirit, and its academic programs – with compelling visuals supporting each point. The result functions much like a virtual guided tour, inviting visitors to explore and connect with what makes St. Anne special.
A Modern Look and Feel
The updated design brings St. Anne’s web presence fully in line with contemporary standards: clean layouts, intentional typography, and a visual system that reflects the school’s character and values. The new site feels warm and welcoming, while remaining professional and polished.
The home page in particular was designed to make a great first impression. It leads with a strong mission statement, spotlights the school’s three core pillars (Academic Excellence, Catholic Identity, and Thriving Community), and provides an at-a-glance statistics section that quickly communicates what sets St. Anne apart, things like a 95% CYO sports participation rate, a 1:1 device program, and 90%+ of teachers holding advanced degrees. All of this gives visitors a well-rounded picture of the school before they’ve even navigated through the site.
Three images of the introduction message and mission (left), school statistics (center), and latest news and events section (right) on the home page.
Optimized Content Organization and Navigation
Organizing a school’s content is the most labor-intensive part of a redesign. Schools have to serve two distinct primary audiences: prospective families researching the school for the first time, and current families who need to find specific information quickly and reliably.
For St. Anne, we worked closely with the team to map out a clear, logical site structure. The result is a navigation layout that balances depth with accessibility. The main menu is organized around the core areas visitors look for: About, Admissions, Academics, Student Life, Family Portal, and Giving; while utility links like School News, Calendar, and Parish are surfaced separately at the top of the page for quick access.
The previous site used a left-hand sidebar and horizontal menu that consumed
valuable page space and made navigation feel cluttered.
The redesigned header consolidates everything into a clean, two-tier navigation, giving the page room to breathe and letting the school’s content take center stage.
We also created dedicated landing pages for each section, providing clear entry points into the school’s content rather than burying information several clicks deep. Whether a family is looking into admissions, trying to understand the school’s academic philosophy, or exploring extracurricular activities, the path to that information is now direct and intuitive.
Richer Content That Tells the Full Story
A major need addressed by this project was developing more comprehensive content around the school’s academic programs and mission, not just a summary, but a real picture of what students experience each day.
To accomplish this, the new Academics section now features dedicated pages for each grade band, Early Learning (Pre-K), Primary (K–2), Intermediate (3–5), and Middle School (6–8), along with detailed profiles of specialist programs in Music, Art, Library, PE, Spanish, and Counseling. The site also clearly communicates the school’s approach to diverse learners, its Student Learning Expectations framework, and its accreditation standing.
This content is crucial in helping families make the decision of whether St. Anne is a good fit for their children. Our goal was to ensure the website does real work in the enrollment process, so when a family calls for a tour, they’ve already learned about the school and its mission, its academic rigor, and its vibrant community. Having thorough, well-organized information means families arrive at a visit already informed and excited.
Our goal was to ensure the website does real work in the enrollment process, so when a family calls for a tour, they’ve already learned about the school and its mission
A Dedicated Family Portal with Volunteer Hours Tracking
St. Anne families now have a dedicated Family Portal, a password-protected hub for current St. Anne families. The portal provides a central home for private school resources like forms, documents, and links parents need easy access to.
We integrated our automated volunteer hours tracking system into this portal as well. Volunteer participation is a meaningful part of the St. Anne community, and previously tracking those hours required manual coordination and a lot of paperwork. The new system allows families to log and monitor their volunteer hours directly through the website, streamlining the process for both families and reducing the administrative burden on school staff. It’s the kind of practical feature that makes a real difference in day-to-day school life, and it’s a great example of how a well-built website can do more than just look appealing.
Built on WordPress for the Long Haul
As with all of our school website projects, the new St. Anne site was built on WordPress. When developing our custom theme for the school, we took full advantage of the block editor to make content updates as straightforward as possible for the school’s staff, no developers needed for routine edits, announcements, or page updates.
The site is also optimized for search engines, with a clean technical foundation and content structured to help families find St. Anne when they’re searching for Catholic schools in Seattle. From page titles and metadata to image alt text and site architecture, SEO best practices were baked in from the start.
The Result: Bringing Fresh Light to a Century-Old Mission
Getting to know St. Anne through this process, its history, its families, and what the staff genuinely believes about education was inspiring. We’re grateful to have had a part in giving that legacy a fresh voice as the school opens the door to its next century.
Visit the site and see it for yourself: St. Anne School
Is your school in need of a stronger web presence? Contact us to find out how we can help.