Empowering Students to Pursue Their Passions

The Challenge

For over 50 years, Oak Hall School has empowered students from ages 3 through 12th grade to excel in academics, arts, and athletics, consistently producing graduates well-prepared for college and successful careers. Despite its reputation as a leading educational institution, Oak Hall’s outdated website failed to effectively engage current and prospective families, offering a cluttered and uninspiring user experience.

The website had become more of a repository than a marketing tool, with overwhelming content and unclear messaging that didn’t capture the school’s true greatness. Oak Hall needed a fresh, compelling digital presence to highlight its strengths and stand out from the competition.

Our Vision

Chiefly, it was our goal to redesign and reactivate a digital presence that aligned to their reputation as a best-in-class school. Beyond that, it was our vision to capture the essence of the OHS brand—a place that isn’t just a school, but a community where students can flourish—so that the greatness of the on-campus experience was felt online.

 

We designed a website that instills trust and confidence in Oak Hall’s audience, aligning digital elements and messaging to reflect the professionalism and reliability the school is known for.
Greatness can become overshadowed over time, as it did with Oak Hall. To amplify the OHS brand, we took a "keep, combine, or kill" approach, ultimately removing much of the content to create a clear and compelling user experience.
The essence of Oak Hall School's brand lies in its people, and we kept this central to every creative decision. By stepping into the world of students, parents, and faculty, we focused on understanding and addressing the unique needs and opportunities of each user group.
Children playing on a red and yellow colored playground.

The Strategy

During our engagement with Oak Hall School, our focus was on improving the design and experience of the website with a comprehensive approach to learning the best ways to represent OHS.

Our full scope of services included messaging and content, a logo refresh, print design, as well as photography and videography.

The Solution

Before any creative work was done, it was our goal to develop a deep understanding of what makes the OHS brand unique. We dug for insights in our Focus Day with the Oak Hall School team, and our workshop revealed a set of 4 core characteristics of the brand.

Together, these attributes would lay a foundation for establishing a purpose-driven brand system that could inform the visuals and develop messaging that resonated with the right audience.

The Web Design & Development

Our main goal in the web design process was to solidify Oak Hall’s standing as a top private education institution in north central Florida.
We aimed to generate curiosity among prospective families by highlighting the school’s unique offerings while ensuring the site also served current families with easily accessible resources.

Unique Website Features

Given the depth of the site, it was crucial to provide users with easy access to relevant content without overwhelming them. We addressed this by creating a full-page mega menu that guided users clearly and added a touch of empathy through dynamic video content for each navigation item.
Though our content strategy centered on prospective families, the site still needed to serve current ones effectively. We created focused “hub” pages for each school level — "Lower School," "Middle School," and "Upper School" — offering clear access to relevant downloads, events, and forms for parents.

Content Development

The old website's content strategy had turned it into a repository for internal needs, failing to engage both prospective and current families effectively.
Our new approach was to prioritize the OHS website as a sales and marketing tool, focusing content on attracting prospective students and families while ensuring clear navigation for all audiences.

Photography & Videography

Oak Hall's beautiful campus is a key value proposition, reflecting its vibrant and welcoming brand. We aimed to capture this energy online by showcasing environmental shots, classroom experiences, special events, and extracurriculars. The resulting photography package was strategically used throughout the website and other digital marketing channels to mirror what future students would experience in person.
Our video strategy aimed to reflect the exceptional campus experience for students and families, ensuring a consistent and inspiring online presence. By focusing on empathy and addressing the interests of prospective students and parents, we produced three strategic videos that served as key content and messaging tools on the new website.
Oak Hall School football players on a field.
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I definitely trust PHOS Creative as an advisor. Their skill set and execution of the project shows that they are passionate about our partnership and about Oak Hall School. We have really missed out on not partnering with PHOS sooner.

Corinna French

Oak Hall School