Sterling Montessori, a Morrisville, NC school serving students from pre-K through middle school, came to us with a website that was working against them. It was dated, hard to manage on their end, and harder to navigate on a visitor’s end. They knew they needed to bring the site up to modern standards. Before tackling the surface, we went after the long-running issues sitting underneath it.
Start by Looking at Everyone Else
Before we sketched a single wireframe, we audited the Montessori school space across the country to understand what families expect when they land on a school’s homepage. We logged the must-haves, flagged the patterns, and noted the individual moments that stood out. That audit told us two things very quickly, and both shaped everything that followed.
The Stock Photos Had to Go
The first thing that jumped off the screen across the Montessori landscape: stock imagery stuck out like a sore thumb. Families choosing a school are making one of the most personal decisions they’ll ever make, and a smiling-kid-from-Getty doesn’t answer the question they’re actually asking, which is what does it feel like to be here?
Sterling’s existing photo set wasn’t going to get them there. So we spent three days on campus shooting hundreds of original photos: real classrooms, real teachers, real students, what a day at Sterling actually looks like. That shoot became the backbone of what the team ended up calling the Sterling Difference, and every page of the new site is built around it. The site is warmer now. It reflects the community-focused approach Sterling takes in real life, because the community is literally on every page. As a bonus, Sterling walked away with a large original image library they’ll keep drawing from for their own communications long after launch.
Rebuilding the Site So Families Can Actually Find What They’re Looking For
The second pivot was structural. The old navigation forced visitors to bounce between menu trees to piece together what Sterling actually offered. You’d find pre-K over here, middle school over there, and the connective tissue between them nowhere. For a school whose whole pedagogy is about continuity across developmental stages, that was a serious mismatch.
We rebuilt the information architecture around the student journey. Now a parent can see the full arc from pre-K through middle school on a single path, and understand what the experience and the learning actually look like at each grade level. The menu stopped being a puzzle and started being a tour.
A Website That Welcomes Every Family
For a school, the website is the front door. When it isn’t accessible, families who rely on screen readers, keyboard navigation, or other assistive tools are turned away before they ever set foot on campus. Wake County Public Schools requires WCAG compliance for exactly this reason, and Sterling’s previous site hadn’t met the standard. We built the new site to WCAG guidelines from the ground up and put it through extensive accessibility testing before launch. It passed. More than a checked box on a district requirement, that pass is a commitment: Sterling’s front door is open to every family in the community it serves.
The Outcome
The new Sterling site does what the old one couldn’t. It represents the heart of the school, guides families through a clear journey from first click to first inquiry, meets the accessibility bar Sterling is held to, and is dramatically easier for Sterling’s own team to manage. It’s a platform the school can grow into rather than one they have to work around.
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The best way to see what changed is to see it yourself. Visit sterlingmontessori.org →
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