Menlo Park Academy

Project Background

Menlo Park Academy is a tuition-free, public charter school serving gifted children across Northeast Ohio. Dylan attended Menlo for middle school and has remained connected with Carol Ryan, Menlo’s Director of Enrollment and Advancement. Since Carol began her tenure in the position in 2021, Dylan has worked with her and Menlo’s team to update and significantly improve the school’s website and online positioning. One focus of Dylan and Carol’s efforts was Menlo’s Admissions section. The section, which spanned eight pages, made it difficult for prospective families to find information, inquire about enrolling in the school, and participate in admissions events.

Our Approach

Spark Creative worked with Carol and the Menlo Admissions team to re-strategize and re-design the Admissions page, turning it into a one-stop hub for information and prospective family engagement. At the beginning of this process, Menlo had separate pages for the admissions process, events, gifted indicators, qualification criteria, re-enrollment, and sibling enrollment. Spark first aimed to consolidate these pages into a single page separated into easy-to-digest sections. Second, Dylan aspired to incorporate more color, media, and diverse ways of presenting information instead of just having text on a page. Lastly, Dylan worked with Carol to devise a simple campaign to use as the overarching theme for the Admissions page.

Our Work

Menlo’s Admissions page evolved from eight individual pages to one hub broken into various sections as prospective families scroll down the page. The page theme—”Help your gifted child flourish at Menlo Park Academy”—boldly rests in the page’s hero before weaving the typographical styling through the rest of the sections. The page includes a clear navigation section beneath the introduction with four tiles to jump users to different portions of the page upon clicking.

The “Why Menlo?” section brings two videos about Menlo Park Academy and its approach to education told through the lens of staff members to the forefront. From there, the “Admissions Process” section beautifully breaks down the four steps in the process with colored cards with images from the school community as their backgrounds. The “Admissions Events” section includes detailed information about information nights, open houses, testing days, and tours in collapsable accordions to prevent overwhelming the user. An adjacent events calendar allows quick access to register for upcoming events. Lastly, the page includes simplified explanations of gifted criteria and indicators from both Menlo and the State of Ohio, plus a final CTA to bring prospective families to Menlo’s admissions portal.