Objectives
- Advanced booking system for teachers and students
- Online payment processing using Stripe
- Lesson course creation and pricing for admins to set
- Email notifications for teachers and students
- Sign Up integration with mailchimp for marketing emails
- Website available in different languages
Challenges
The Booking System
The project called for an automation system where students could book lessons with various teachers when they are available. This involved creating a calendar for students and teachers alike that could easily place bookings in a visual way. It also enabled greater control and insight for students and teachers on a dashboard to see their upcoming schedule.
The Payment System
The payment handling for the web application was done through Stripe. Stripe has a super flexible way to help create payments and verify purchases quickly and securely. Stripe even has advanced support for subscriptions and recurring payments for additional features later. Learning these features was a challenge to get it working in coordination with the database and admin management. But once working, proved to add incredible business value and income to help grow the business.
Timeline
The project also called for the web application to be developed rapidly with continual expansion in the future with new features, changes and improvements along the way. To ensure the chosen technology to build the application needed to be considered carefully. Due to the rapid development requirements, the technology chosen for development was Ruby On Rails.This framework enables rapid and complex development of features that can be linked to a database, Stripe and any other API's or integrations needed. Ruby on Rails is used by massive companies such as Shopify, GitHub, and Airbnb. More consumer-friendly technologies such as WordPress would have resulted in far more issues, less functionality and slower performance for users.
The Process
1.
Identifying Business Goals
The Primary focus at Graphite Technologies is to attain the fundamental business goals for the project and for the business to grow through digital technology. To do this our first step is to identify the core business goals. We do this by conducting several meetings to discuss the project, current business standing and history to understand the company at its focus. With Convo Academy the web application needed to enable higher growth and automation so the business owners, managers and teachers could focus on providing high quality education to its customers.
Identifying Business Values and Branding
Another integral pillar at Graphite Technologies is ensuring the business values and branding is accomplished and aligned. This ensures maximum engagement with their users and ensures that the business brand and image is built up and strengthened. At Graphite Technologies we want to be closer to being part of the business and not a disconnected agency.
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3.
Website Design
The website design process involved constant iteration and careful consideration to the target demographic. Early into the project the user demographic was highlighted by the business as being diverse, multilanguage and sceptical to purchasing online. Due to this, the site design initially was developed using much of the same design as their existing website and branding had. Since its inception over 12 months ago, Graphite Technologies has introduced a radically new design that focuses on providing trust, future expansion, and an exciting experience to users.
Review
During this ongoing project, constant review and communication have been at the forefront in ensuring Convo Academy's core business goals and objectives are met. Throughout each new redesign, feature or modification that has been made it has gone through several review processes by Convo Academy.
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Future
The website is continually being worked on and improved. Its been a fantastic experience to build both a relationship with Convo Academy as well as build even more features and optimisations. This project is an ongoing project that is contiunally being improved and iterated on. We plan to add many more features and optimisations to generate more business and provide amazing value to Convo Academy's customers.
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