The Training Societi
The Training Societi provide health and safety training relevant to many public, private and industry sectors and occupations, including: public sector, maintenance, manufacturing, local authorities, construction and trades. In 2014 we started working with The Training Societi to develop their website and improve usability.
The Brief
Previously The Training Societi were primarily using a system called ‘Administrate’ to allow website visitors to book places on their courses. The system allowed them to display the available dates, take bookings, send joining instructions and track each course. However, they encountered many issues with their old system and wanted to move to something more robust. During some previous work we implemented some development to help them display the information in a more user-friendly format, whilst still integrating Administrate as a sales tool. The next step was to develop this further, integrating the booking system with WooCommerce, a WordPress e-commerce solution, and events calendar. This solution would allow The Training Societi to log into the back end of the website and manage all course information, dates, delegates, etc. in one, user-friendly place.
The Solution
On the front end we created a more user friendly e-commerce system, where users were able to browse courses as much as they did but now with booking functionality on the course pages themselves, this also includes a calendar page that can be filtered. To try to improve their marketing we also included the ability for people to comment and review the course’s they’ve purchased or attended, the comments are approved and then appear on the page.
Users are able to book one or more places on one or more courses by adding them to their shopping cart and checking out using their preferred payment system, i.e. Stripe. When a sale is made an account is set up allowing them to log in next time using the same details. Bookers have access to an account page with details of all their transactions.
We also updated the homepage to neatly display a combination of: course categories, most recently booked courses, ‘last few spaces remaining’, most recently added, latest reviews and more.
It was important we delivered a new booking system that was SEO friendly, so that when bookers were searching for courses The Training Societi was a match.
For the team internally, it was important we found a solution that would cover the many variables they encounter with every booking. This included over the phone bookings and then email confirmations, online reservations and then later adding delegates and details both online, via email and over the phone, and also multiple ways of payment.
Additional features of the booking system include providing the trainers with schedules and lists of delegates attending, a tick system to register delegates, once a course has been completed they are able to send certificates to delegates. We integrated the system with a CRM, this allows the Training Societi to follow up with prospects, those who reserve but do not book, the staff can make a note of those they have called and emailed and finally it reminds delegates and bookers when they need to take refresher courses because their certificates are due to expire.
Testimonial
We selected Soto to design and build new web pages to allow our members and invited guests to register their interest in a prestigious business event hosted by 12 Hay Hill. Soto’s creative design influenced the project beyond the web while their attentiveness and level of execution were simultaneously superb.
12 Hay Hill