CASE STUDIES - PRO-SCOT LTD
THE CLIENT
Pro-Scot is the leading rider and driver training school in Fife. They provide a range of driving lessons for those looking for their first car or motorcycle licences, as well as advanced training to experienced drivers. They have a growing number of franchisee driving instructors who carry out the car training and boast excellent facilities for bike training at their Kirkcaldy headquarters. They also train driving instructors, offer fleet training services and sell a range of motorcycle clothing.
THEIR REQUIREMENTS
In May 2006, we were asked by Pro-Scot to redesign their web site. Although their current site had been in existence for a few years, Pro-Scot were looking for an updated look, and wanted to build a web site that was more appealing to their key target market of younger drivers.
The client was very clear on the importance of having separate areas for each of the main services offered, as they felt that those looking for driving lessons would not be interested in motorcycle training and vice versa.
We were also asked to create a site that would:
- Give potential customers enough information to make an informed choice on where to go for their driving lessons, without over-burdening users with details;
- Present Pro-Scot as a dynamic and exciting company to train with;
- Use successful students' testimonials as a key element of the site to showcase the diverse range and number of successful candidates;
- Create an administrative area to add and edit testimonials, news and prices.
WHAT WE DELIVERED
Key to the redesign was the use of real student testimonials. We wanted to avoid any possible accusations of making them up, so virtually every successful car and motorcycle Pro-Scot trainee has their photograph and testimonial on the site. As of May 2007, there are more than 500 of them! If nothing else, this is a great advert for the company.
We created a web site home page that very clearly through visuals, directed users to the area appropriate to them. The site design used Pro-Scot's corporate colours to promote the brand.
The site was built with extensive administrative functionality allowing the Pro-Scot staff to use to add testimonials, change training prices and amend news items amongst other tasks.
The site itself was built in Ruby on Rails by Craig Webster of Xeriom Networks, one of the leading Scottish Rails developers. Xeriom Networks also provided the hosting for the site in an integrated arrangement that made the development, launch and ongoing maintenance straight-forward.
ONGOING WORK
We're proud to say that Pro-Scot has been a work in progress from the day of launch. The owner of the business, John Macdonald, has been extremely hands-on with the site, and we've worked closely with him improving the site over the past year.
As well as actual work on the site, we've also run a Google Adwords campaign for the client, and based on the findings from this have made several amends and additions to the make the site more search engine friendly and more importantly, more user friendly too.
As well as adding items, we've also removed some. The client changed their mind about what they actually wanted it to look like, so we did a redesign of the redesign!
And we continue to work with Pro-Scot on a weekly basis.
Most pleasing for us, we have shown through the Google Analytics statistics that both users and visits to the site have increased month on month by an average of 32% visitors and 17% page views. This has been achieved through a mixture of search engine optimisation, pay-per-click campaigns and use of strategic search terms.
THEIR FEEDBACK
When we decided that it was time to redevelop our website we found it hard to make a decision: nearly all promised the earth and at prices that varied so much. Jason did his bike test with us and offered to help us, at first I was sceptical, Arkose were a small company after all, could they really provide us with what we needed?
We wanted a large multiple entry site, it had to be clean, clinical, and professional whilst being easy to navigate with minimum text and lots of images. Jason and Emma designed just what I had asked for, and then I changed my mind!
Jason was very patient and understanding despite several design, content and layout changes from me, because I could not make my mind up. Arkose have worked with us all the way, they have gone above and beyond our expectations, nothing is too much trouble for them, they have provided us with a large clean, easy to navigate site that is bright and colourful with lots of unique areas to it. We have without doubt the most professional rider and driver training site around, our rankings are on the front pages of most search engines and our Google stats package provided by Arkose enable us to measure the sites success. The fact that we receive over 2000 unique views per week and business enquiries are up by approx 25% since the site went live is testimony to that. I can't wait for Phase 2, with the addition of e-commerce.
Our website is now a continual work in progress and Jason's enthusiasm and encouragement to embrace and welcome the new ideas and changes required will ensure that our site will stay top in our industry.
I have no hesitation recommending Jason and Emma at Arkose Design for anyone who needs a website whether it be large or small, at extremely competitive prices.
