Building Better Branded Template Websites
For school districts, businesses, and other organizations, template websites offer a simple, effective way to balance ease of use, budget-conscious design, and a professional online presence. Fitting your brand into a pre-built template is more than overlaying a skin or applying a color scheme—it’s about allowing your identity and impact to be seen and interacted with.
CEL partners with schools and like-minded organizations to elevate and customize templates where it counts, guiding brand decisions and delivering award-winning results.
Whether you’re working with tight timelines, a lean internal team, or fiscal constraints, a template website helps you stay focused on your communication goals without compromising visual impact.
Why Choose a Template or Theme Website?
Templates today are more than “plug and play” and have developed exponentially over the last 5-10 years in design, functionality, and user experience. These platforms and templates now include:
- Responsive design for building seamless mobile and desktop experiences
- Accessibility features built into the design from the start
- Ongoing platform updates and customer support, depending on your provider
- No coding required or developer needed to get started
- Reusable design homepage enhancement features on high-traffic internal pages
How CEL Makes It Work
CEL provides the strategic framework and guidance you need—whether you’re updating your current site or building a new one from the ground up. With the right template and the right process, we help you create a site that’s both easy to manage and built to last.
- Discovery-driven decisions
Through our process and during the initial stages of work, CEL identifies whether you need a light refresh or a full redesign, and helps align your website goals with the right level of customization. - Tailoring the template to your brand
Templates may be widely available, but that doesn’t mean your website should look like everyone else’s. CEL ensures your brand shines through and guides the application of your colors, fonts, imagery, and content structure so that even standard elements feel uniquely yours (and customizing when standard isn’t enough!). - Building content with clarity
From homepage hierarchy to tone and messaging, we help streamline your content and create logical structures, making it easy for families and community members to find what they need, right where they expect it. - Streamline the path to launch
Our deep experience with templated platforms means fewer delays, fewer revisions, and faster turnarounds, with structured QA processes that reduce the burden on your internal team.
To put it simply, CEL is a lifesaver. I was in a desperate situation to change my web design, as my current template was expiring. With coincidental timing, I connected with CEL to discover that this was something they had handled for many other school districts and support me as well. It is thanks to their forethought and future strategic planning ideas around web that I am bringing them back to improve my overall website strategy. If you are a one-person shop, or even a larger district, this is a team you need to talk to."
~CHRISTY MCGEE, APR
DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS
From Templates to Standouts: Our Partners’ Results
CEL helps clients turn pre-built templates into powerful, on-brand communications tools. Whether through small custom touches or broader content restructuring, we ensure each project reflects the identity, values, and goals of the organization behind it.
These sites show how strategic use of templates can deliver both function and distinction:
Oregon School District
Oregon School District used a templated platform as the foundation for a full site revamp, prioritizing accessibility and content structure across the website and school subsites. CEL led the discovery and content strategy process, helping the district reduce outdated materials, improve navigation, and apply branded design elements beyond logos and color themes. The new structure supports district-wide consistency while preserving each school’s ability to manage and personalize its own content, resulting in a family-focused website recognized nationally for excellence.
Oregon School District received the Award of Excellence in the 2025 NSPRA Publications & Digital Media Awards for its website redesign.
Elkhart Community Schools
CEL worked within a template to deliver a customized structure with brand-aligned elements, including a refreshed homepage layout and thoughtful navigation choices. These updates made the site not only easier to use, but also better aligned to the district’s communications goals.
Albertville City Schools
Albertville set out to do more than refresh their look—they wanted a site that worked smarter. CEL helped elevate their template with bold branding and developed intuitive paths to information using purposeful content design. New features like a dedicated athletics hub, automated directories, and a secure staff portal made the site more useful behind the scenes, while visual consistency and plain-language content brought clarity to the their core audiences: their families. Together, Albertville now holds a polished, people-first website built to evolve with the district—earning national recognition for its design and functionality.
Additional Partner Websites
CEL also supported EP Boosters (Eden Prairie School District’s booster club), Fountain Fort Carson District 8, Laura Jeffrey Academy, and Northeast College Prep to replace outdated websites with cleaner, more mission-aligned designs. Each project used a different website platform, but all shared a focus on clear communication, inclusive language, and designs that reflect the values of their communities.
Ready to Build a Better Website?
A template is just the starting point. The difference comes from how you use it and who you trust to guide the process.
At CEL, we help schools and organizations take templated platforms and themed websites and turn them into something more. We create sites that are aligned with your goals, reflective of your brand, and truly built for the people you serve. Whether you need a refresh or a full redesign, we’ll help you get there.
Let’s build a website that works—for your team, your families, and your future.
