Barry Beckett Childrens Centre is a community based long day care centre that provides care and education to children from 3 months up until school age. In 2010, the centre committee decided to design a brand new website in Joomla and in 2014 they updated to WordPress to allow easy editing via the backend by the centre coordinator. I designed and implemented both websites with search engine optimisation techniques combined with a Google Places listing. Barry Beckett noticed a strong increase in the number of people contacting their centre through the website and traffic stats showed increased unique visitors of 700 targeted people per month within the first three months.

An addition to the Joomla website in 2010 included a gallery of children’s drawings, further enhancing the visual appeal and increasing the perception of high quality child-oriented care.

I directed a photo shoot and used the photos throughout the website to show parents what a beautiful centre Barry Beckett is. A flash gallery of images also showed parents what they could expect regarding the environment their children would be in and the photos really “sold” the centre visually to the parents. At the time, not many childcare centres had large photo galleries for parents to peruse, so bringing photos to the fore for marketing was a new development in the industry, resulting in increased requests for my photography and web design services.

Since the Barry Beckett website was launched, the centre has never been short of filling places in the centre. Access to employees (who were looking for a small, pleasant working environment of this type) improved as well, with many enquiries for employment being received through the website. Enrolments and handbooks were placed online so that parents could apply for places and not have to travel back and forth filling in documents and receiving paperwork.

• Photography
• Web