The client
The American School of Paris is one of the city’s leading international schools, competing in one of the world’s most intense education markets. Prospective families research it from London, Dubai, and Singapore, often in the middle of an international move. The website is the first campus visit.
The problem
ASP was on Finalsite, an enterprise school platform. Every small update meant a support ticket, a wait of days, and a bill. So they decided not to renew.
They had already started moving to Webflow with another agency, but the build came up short. Board members spotted the brand gaps right away: a missing transparent banner, the animated red line under titles gone, the exact shade of blue that says “this is us” not quite right.
It wasn’t only design. The new build had no search, the parent portal sat in the wrong place, and the quicklinks families use every day, PowerSchool and Schoology, were missing. With families judging the school from every device and time zone, the mobile experience had to be flawless.
What I did
Working with ASP’s Director of Institutional Advancement and their Community Relations Manager, I finished the migration and optimized what had been overlooked.
- Restored the brand. The original blue, the red-line animation rebuilt, the transparent banner fixed with custom CSS. Details that matter when a family is judging your school during a stressful move.
- Made it work like a school. Real search, the parent portal moved up to the top menu, and quicklinks to the daily tools families need: PowerSchool, Schoology, the calendar, cafeteria recharge.
- Set it up to be found. Schema markup so ASP shows up when families search “international schools Paris,” plus optimization for the AI tools families now use to research schools. Compressed images, cleaned-up CSS, accessibility checked.
- Handed over the keys. A practical SEO report the team could actually use, not a 47-page PDF nobody opens.
Where it landed
The communications team has control. They update content during inquiry season, test new messaging, and respond to enrollment cycles without an external dependency slowing them down.
As Clive Watkins, Director of Institutional Advancement, put it: “Mike fine-tuned our school’s website, improved the structure, and delivered a helpful SEO health check to make sure the site is optimized for international families.”
When the platform stops fighting you, the website finally gets to work as hard as your admissions team does.