Web & DigitalBuilt for how parents actually choose a school
DayDreamer built PISM's corporate website, a 360° virtual campus tour, and the open-day campaign that brought parents to both. The site is structured around how a parent shortlists a school — programmes by age group, the curriculum, the admission process and assessment, the calendar — so the questions families actually ask are answered on the page instead of held back for an enquiry. The virtual tour puts the campus itself online: 360° panoramas navigable floor by floor, from the preschool wing and the year-group classrooms to the science and ICT labs, libraries, cafeteria and rooftop courts, with aerial views of the whole school. And to fill the open day, we ran the campaign across Meta and Google Ads — taking the invitation to parents in the catchment rather than waiting to be found by them.
Overview
Parents choose an international school long before they ever visit one. DayDreamer built PISM's corporate website around that decision — the curriculum, the programmes by age, and the admission path, written for the parent asking the questions — added a 360° virtual tour so families can walk the campus from home, and ran the Meta and Google Ads campaign that put the school's open day in front of them.
Background
Planetarium International School, Melaka (PISM) is a purpose-built international school in Taman Pandan Indah, Melaka, operated by Planetarium International Sdn Bhd, incorporated in July 2020. It teaches students aged 3 to 18, from Early Years through primary, secondary and high school, on a UK-based curriculum with syllabus and assessment support from Cambridge Assessment International Education leading to the Cambridge IGCSE, and organises its teaching around CLIMATES — Communication, Language, Innovation, Mathematics, Arts, Technology, Engineering and Science.
Choosing a school is one of the highest-stakes decisions a family makes, and almost all of it happens before anyone walks through the gate. Parents shortlist online: they want to know what their child would actually be taught, at what age, on what curriculum, and what the place feels like day to day — and they want to know it without booking anything first. A school website written to the school's own structure rather than to those questions loses that shortlist quietly, because nobody writes in to say why they moved on. An open day has the same problem from the other side: it only works if the parents who would have come know it is happening.
What we delivered
Corporate website
Web design & build
Designed and built PISM's website — programmes by age group, the curriculum, admissions, assessment, calendar and school news — as the school's front door rather than a brochure.
Content for parents
Content strategy
Shaped what the site says and the order it says it in around the questions parents actually ask when shortlisting a school, so the answers sit on the page instead of behind an enquiry form.
360° virtual campus tour
Immersive experience
Built a browser-based 360° tour of the campus with floor-by-floor navigation — classrooms, labs, libraries, arts and music rooms, cafeteria, courts and field, plus aerial views — so parents can see the environment before they visit.
Open-day campaign
Digital advertising
Ran the school's open-day campaign across Meta and Google Ads, putting the invitation in front of parents in the catchment and pointing them at the pages built to answer them.
Tech & tools
Outcomes
- →Gave PISM a website that answers what a parent asks — curriculum, programme by age, admission steps, assessment, calendar — rather than saving it for an enquiry form.
- →Put the campus online. Parents can walk the school floor by floor in 360°, from the preschool wing to the rooftop courts, without booking a visit or making the trip to Melaka.
- →Made the open day something parents were invited to rather than something they had to stumble across, by running the campaign on Meta and Google Ads where they were already looking.
- →Took distance out of the shortlisting decision for families outside Melaka, who can see the environment their child would be in before deciding whether the visit is worth making.
- →Front-loaded the basics — what is taught, at what age, and what the place looks like — so the admissions team's time goes to the conversations that need a person.
Built with
Frequently asked questions
We're a school. Do we need a virtual tour, or are photographs enough?+
Photographs show a parent the angle you chose. A 360° tour lets them look around — at the classroom their child would sit in, the lab, the library, the field — and decide for themselves. For PISM the tour covers the campus floor by floor, so a family that cannot travel to Melaka this week can still see the school properly.
Can parents view the virtual tour on a phone, without an app or a headset?+
Yes. PISM's tour runs in an ordinary browser on a phone, tablet or laptop — nothing to download, no headset. That matters, because a parent shortlisting schools is usually doing it on a phone in the evening, and any download in the way is where they stop.
Should a school website be written for parents or for students?+
For parents, in almost every case — they are the ones shortlisting, comparing and paying, and they arrive with a specific list of questions. We wrote PISM's site to that list: curriculum, programme by age, admission process, assessment, calendar. Students matter to the decision, but they are rarely the ones reading the admissions page.
Can you run the ad campaign as well as build the site, or do we need a separate agency for that?+
We can do both, and on PISM we did. The open-day campaign ran on Meta and Google Ads and pointed at the pages we had just built, which is the point — an ad that lands on a page that does not answer the question has spent the click for nothing.