St Mary’s Early Childhood Education Centre

Website address

www.stmaryschildcare.org.nz

Judges’ comment

This is an excellent site. It’s clear, well structured, easy to navigate, user-friendly, and has attractive visuals. Parents are likely find exactly what they need, in clear language with a friendly, forthcoming tone. This site would make you want to send your child to St Mary’s.

You’ve used familiar language and written sentences using mostly active voice.

Headings are frequent and useful, and you’ve made excellent use of bulleted lists and left-aligned links. You’ve also used expandable sections well on the ‘Teachers’ page, letting readers choose which content they read.

Consider refining the design and layout a bit more to make the site seem less busy, and to organise information more clearly.

Media statement

St Mary’s Early Childhood Education Centre is thrilled that our website is a finalist in the WriteMark Plain English Awards.

Customers often form impressions about what an organisation is like based on how it presents itself on its website. We’re a small, family-focused childcare centre with a Christian philosophy of welcoming and caring for others. When we use plain English, we ‘write more like we talk’, which makes it easier for us to convey who we are and what we value.

Our website is very important to us and we want it to work well for both prospective and existing parents. Using plain English principles helps us achieve this goal by keeping the needs of our audience ‘top of mind’.

Which early childhood education service to choose for their child is a big decision for parents. We can help reduce some of that stress by making important information easy to find and easy to understand on our website. Our existing families are also busy people, so we’ve recently added a news blog (with a feed on our home page) to help families keep up-to-date with our latest news and photos.

We’re committed to using plain English principles for our web content as they work really well for our organisation.

Geoffrey Lee
Licensee

Eleanor Cave
Content Designer and Writer

www.stmaryschildcare.org.nz