Putting it All Together: How Edlio Helps Bishop Feehan High School Use Their Best School Branding to Build an Online Presence for Academics, Athletics, & Fundraising
Bishop Feehan High School (BFHS) is a Catholic school in Attleboro, MA. With their previous website, they had difficulty managing things on the back end, and that reflected in navigation challenges for front-end site visitors. With some departments being run by single staff members, BFHS needed a partner who would build them a CMS that was both robust and easy to update; they found that partner in Edlio.
Ready for an Update
Gina Simoneau is the Director of Strategic Communications at Bishop Feehan High School in Massachusetts. Gina mentioned that they had wanted to update their website for a while, but “COVID kind of just shut things down for a little bit, and it was really all on me to make the decision of what company to go with [for a new website],” she says. Gina researched and interviewed 7 different school website providers before deciding on Edlio. She took her findings to her boss: “I presented him with three options, and everything kept pointing toward Edlio, so it was kind of an easy decision once I talked about it with him,” Gina adds.
What made Edlio stand out amongst such fierce competition? Gina says that she knew right away in some of those interviews that other school technology companies were not going to be a good fit for Bishop Feehan. “Some, as soon as I met with them the first time, I knew that they did not have the capacity to help me with things that I needed; others had just very complicated technology. I'm a one-person department, so you can give me a lot to work with, but I don't have the capacity to engage with it,” Gina says.
When looking at Edlio, she knew she had found a blend of advanced technology with easy user experience. “I felt that Elio had everything I wanted for now with room to grow, and that's important,” Gina remarks.
Featuring Athletics
In addition to their primary school website, Bishop Feehan is in the process of adding on an additional site for their Athletics department. Gina is excited to offer this new add-on site for her school community. She says, “we'll go live in June with our athletic site and [the community members] are going to be so thrilled because our current site is just really hard to use,” she comments.
The transition to a second site has been smooth, thanks to Edlio’s existing relationship with Bishop Feehan. “I think the consistency and the branding is fantastic, and your price structure was excellent, so it really made a lot of sense for us to make this leap and I'm excited for that project as well,” Gina adds.
Fundraising & Enrollment
Bishop Feehan High School has been able to leverage their Edlio technology in order to make progress on their goals for fundraising and enrollment; two essential elements for private schools. “This was our first year using our Edlio site for our admissions experience for incoming students. With our prior website, we did the best we could, but it was not an optimal experience. I now know what I want to do to make it even better for next year and that's important for us,” Gina says.
In addition to an Edlio website, Bishop Feehan uses OSP by Edlio to power their school store and offer online ticket sales to their community. As Gina explains, “now we can run a report of every kid that bought a ticket, the day before the deadline, and we tell the kids if their name is not on the list, it means Mom and Dad didn't buy your ticket, so you're not allowed at the dance; and that's been a really big help because that stuff happens.”
The built-in reporting features also help the Business Manager at Bishop Feehan avoid accounting-related problems for the school. “We have one business manager, so you know she's got everything from SAT registrations to prom tickets; so many different people coming at her with things to put up on the store, so the reporting is amazing compared to anything we were used to and more than meets our needs,” Gina explains.
A Partnership that Grows
Overall, Gina has been impressed with Edlio’s commitment to customer service and company growth. The whole Edlio team has supported Bishop Feehan, from sales to design to client success. “I worked with Tina on the overall design and she was patient and thorough. And I met with Johan four times and he probably answered the same questions over and over, and he was fantastic and very timely,” says Gina.
She adds that she is happy to know that Storm, Bishop Feehan’s dedicated Client Success Specialist, is always there to answer questions or troubleshoot with her. “My experience with the prior company was terrible because sometimes it would take me a second time to ask the same question,” she remarks. “Whereas I know that if I send Storm an email, I can put it away for a day, because I know she’s going to get right back to me. Just being a one-person department it's hard to babysit my vendors, so I appreciate the fact that I don't have to do that with Edlio; I know you'll answer me,” she adds.
