Our Award-Winning Website

Celebrating a Silver Award in the 2026 CASE Circle of Excellence

We are delighted to share some great news with our community. Our new website (launched in June 2025) has been honoured with a Silver Award in the 2026 CASE Circle of Excellence in the ‘Marketing: Websites’ category.

CASE’s annual Circle of Excellence Awards showcase outstanding work in advancement, recognising exceptional achievement in advancement services, alumni relations, communications, fundraising and marketing — the creative, inspiring projects that impact institutions and their communities.

With over 4,000 entries from educational institutions in 33 countries, evaluated by hundreds of professional peers, this recognition means a lot to us at ISZL. It affirms the quality of our website and the strategy, care and community spirit that contributed to its success.

Why we set out to reimagine our website
Our previous website had served us faithfully, but a thorough community audit told a clear story. With more than 1,400 pages, it had become text-heavy and difficult to navigate, and it didn’t quite capture our values and vision. For prospective families exploring international education in Central Switzerland, and for our own parents (many of whom are non-native English speakers) we wanted something clearer, more welcoming, and unique to ISZL.

A strategy rooted in who we are
Rather than follow the polished “corporate” style of many school websites, we chose to lean into what makes us distinctive: our village community spirit, our 65+ nationalities, and our wonderful “best of both worlds” location, combining our campuses in Zug and Hünenberg with our mountain chalet, Chalet Bergheim, in Wengen.

Working in partnership with our digital agency, The Web Kitchen, we moved away from a restrictive blue palette to a vibrant new visual identity, using warm accent colours and storytelling to put real student voices front and centre. Virtual tours now invite families to step onto our campuses from anywhere in the world, and a “Say More with Less” content strategy replaces the previous clutter with new clarity.

Thoughtful, community-led work behind the scenes
This was a considerable undertaking, and one we approached rigorously over a period of 9 months. We began with extensive research, interviewing stakeholders across the whole school, from our School Director to community coordinators and parents from all three divisions, to ensure the site genuinely served everyone. Two members of our Marketing Team then reviewed, consolidated and rewrote every page over an intensive period of several months, ensuring the finished site spoke with an authentic ISZL voice.

We also took the opportunity to bring our public website and our private parent portal together, integrating the various systems our families use into one seamless, single-sign-on journey. The result is a site that is a genuine hub for our whole community.

The difference it has made
Since launch, the response has been really positive. Prospective families are engaging with us in far greater numbers, enquiries through our website have risen substantially, and interest in our admissions pages has grown significantly. Just as importantly, our own community has embraced the change, with colleagues describing the new site as “sleek,” “vibrant,” and far more true to the spirit of our school.

With thanks to our community
This award belongs to everyone who contributed their time, insight and enthusiasm. It reflects the values at the heart of “We are all ISZL” and it reminds us that when a project is guided by a clear strategy and a deep understanding of our community, the results speak for themselves.

Fiona – Marcoms Manager