One of the services that Le Breton is known for is training, specifically training for the construction and childcare industries. (The other service that Le Breton is known for is recruitment, but this case study involves the training part of their business.)

Like most training companies these days, Le Breton offered an online booking system on their website. However, while it was designed to make their lives – and their customers’ lives – easier, it wasn’t really delivering.

Looking at the statistics and the figures on their Google AdWords campaigns, Le Breton could see that plenty of people were visiting their website. But the website wasn’t converting enough visitors into course attendees. Worse, because of the way the ordering system was set up, Le Breton had no way of knowing at what point in the booking process people were dropping out, so it wasn’t easy to know how to increase the conversion rate. The one thing they did know was that the system was cumbersome and slowed the whole site down, so it wasn’t the pleasure to use they wanted it to be.

Help was needed!

Ross Davies, Content Manager at Le Breton, takes up the story.

“Our site uses WordPress, so we Googled to find someone who could help us develop a new booking system plugin. We found Rich via an AdWords campaign. We asked him, along with two other developers, to quote for the work of developing a new booking plugin. Rich was most responsive of all of them. He also had all the answers and provided a quote that came in on budget. We had no hesitation in asking him to work with us.”

A simple booking system plugin for a WordPress website

So far, so simple. Our brief was to develop a simple booking plugin for the Le Breton website. It needed to be lightweight so it didn’t slow the site down. It also needed to allow them to see at what point in the booking process people were dropping out so they could make changes to improve the conversion rate.

We got to work… And then the phone rang and everything changed.

A complete ecommerce solution

Le Breton had decided to upgrade their in-house CRM system to improve the way they used information in-house. The decision meant the job spec changed from developing a WordPress plugin to replacing Le Breton’s entire ecommerce system and integrating it with their new CRM system.

Actually, the switch to the new CRM opened up a world of possibilities because suddenly we had a blank canvas. We suggested to Ross that this was an amazing opportunity to look at the entire booking process from the ground up and develop something that really delivered what their visitors needed. He agreed and we set to work again.

Ross said: “Rich was incredibly understanding when we told him our plans. He requoted for the work involved and even found a way to incorporate some of the work he’d done so far into the new spec.”

Booking the bigger picture

Our first step was to carry out some research to find out how people like to buy training these days.

We found that – compared to the best online training booking systems – Le Breton’s was too complex and too detailed. For example, the person booking the course needed to enter the names of all the delegates at the time of booking, although this didn’t become apparent that they would need to do this until quite a long way into the process. When one person was booking a place for themselves, that was fine. More often than not, though, it would be a secretary or PA who had been tasked with booking ten people onto an appropriate training course and they simply didn’t have the names to hand so would more than likely abandon the booking all together.

The new online booking system involves just two stages, compared to the previous four. At our suggestion, delegates’ names are obtained by a phone call from one of Le Breton’s sales team after a booking has been made. As well as making life easier for the person making the booking, it’s also a great opportunity to for the sales team to introduce Le Breton properly and open up the possibilities of additional sales.

Nitty gritty detail

Developing a smooth, easy to use and user friendly booking system is mostly about getting the detail right. We had to make sure the CRM was seamlessly integrated with the website booking system. We worked closely with Le Breton to make sure that every bit of course data – such as title, date, location – was correctly tagged so it would display simply and clearly on the website and booking system.

We developed the booking system plugin from scratch. Payment is handled by the awesome WooCommerce plugin, although we added some bespoke elements so it was perfectly tailored to Le Breton’s requirements. The final step was to add code that would link the CRM, the booking system plugin and WooCommerce together so you can’t see the joins.

The result is a simple, streamlined booking system that is user friendly and easy to understand. And, of course, each step is properly documented so Le Breton can monitor conversion rates rigorously (ahem).

A booking bonanza

We think the results of our work speak for themselves – and we’re just as delighted with them as Le Breton are. They’ve been running the same AdWords campaign for a while now, both before we started work and after. It means they can say with absolute authority that they are receiving the same number of visitors to the site as they were before but the booking rate has increased by 50%!

Ross concludes: “Rich’s work met all our expectations and the results speak for themselves. The transformation in the effectiveness of our website wouldn’t have happened without Rich. He was a pleasure to work with and we’ll continue to use him in future without a doubt.

Thanks, Ross, it’s our pleasure!