Google Cloud

Implementation of an edtech platform for online tutor scheduling

admin — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 11:47:12 +0000

Implementation of an edtech platform for online tutor scheduling admin Mon, 01/02/2023 - 11:47

Implementation of an edtech platform for online tutor scheduling with in-depth live class mechanism

Edtech

Belgium, Netherlands

Ideation & project roadmap development

Drupal custom module development

Drupal site building & frontend

Support & AMC

Performance optimization

Drupal 8

Apache SOLR

Acquia Cloud

GITLabs

JIRA

Confluence

Browserstack

The client's team had several discussions with us where we interpreted the the market feedbacks we had received into feature set, and they engaged us as a technical consultant to their project. Once the requirement set as hardened, and then development roadmap was clearly laid down, we were obviously the first choice as a development team, considering our contribution to the project so far.

The client is a young and dynamic edtech startup that originated from a varied group of tutors and academics who offer tutoring, both online and in-classroom setup. Headquartered in Ghent, they are active throughout Belgium and the Netherlands. Since 2013, this platform brings students and tutors together. More than 16,000 students have already found a private tutor through their platform.

The portal is an online platform for students to book classes from various tutors of diverse backgrounds. Students can search for tutors and classes based on various filters and criteria. These classes can be both online via web conference, or home tutoring.

This project was meant to be a website for students to book classes from various tutors online. The tutors would register online and fill up various information and their resume. They would then go through an approval process and once verified, their listing would start to appear on the site. Students can search based on different criteria using an extensive filtering mechanism. They can then book the two modes of classes - either online or offline (if a tutor has added this option to his profile).

Then the student makes a payment deposit as per selected tutor as per selected time slot and per hour rate of the tutor. And once done, the payment is escrowed to the tutor, after he enters his bank details, IBAN and BIC details. Another great functionality which we implemented here is the group class feature. Any tutor can start the group class and can mention how many students can be accommodated in one group class. And then students start to register for the class till it is full. There are various complex discount calculations which a student is entitled to if refers another student to the group as there is a feature to get referral discounts for referring other students to the group class. Some of the processes, especially referral discount calculation, were very complex, and our team of experienced backend developers successfully handled those challenges and went above and beyond every expectation.

Here's a gist of some of the functionalities we built grounds up, as per market feedback and analysis, and discussion with the client's product team.

Group Class Mechanism - The client wanted to implement a new feature called group class. So instead of an one on one session, a tutor can create a class at some future date, and allow multiple students to sign up for the same class. This was supposed to be an extension of the existing class system, but would need a special wage and fees calculation mechanism in place.
Referral Credits & Discounts - Client also wanted to start a referral mechanism programme. Here, one student can refer another student to join the site. Such users who join in, become the referral of the invitee, and any subsequent classes they purchase will entitle invitee for some discounts on the class the invitee purchases. Also, this referral mechanism was supposed to be multi level, instead of one level. So if a referred student further refers to another one, the invitee of this referred student also gains a referral credit/discount.
Online Video Conferencing for Online Tutoring Classes - Also, the client needed some enhancements to the online video conferencing feature on top of the existing system.
Design Improvements - There were quite a few pages, which were pretty basic and did not uphold the spirit of the site. The client discussed this matter with our designing team and engaged us to revamp and improve the design elements across the site to make it look more attractive.

The series of features we implemented not only helped the client gain more customers, but it also allowed them to expand to new markets, with considerable revenue boost. We forged a strong professional alliance and continue to support them for all their technical needs,

Bijleshuis Testimonial

While the client already had a MVP launched and they had gained considerable market insights, they needed a technical partner co-work with them to translate these into a solid phased development plan. Our team was able to evaluate the market feedbacks and design robust solutions that transformed customer journey and user experience. The features we implemented led to an overall increase in customer retention by 20%, paid customer conversion by 30% and led to an overall improvement in backend efficiency.

1.5+ years, phased development

Bijleshuis Testimonial II

Heading

Increase in customer retention by 20%

Outcome

With more user friendly process design, the portal became easier to use and the customer retention increased considerably.

Heading

Paid customer conversion by 30%

Outcome

The market analysis revealed some must have features, and once these were implemented, the site saw a surge in paid customer number and overall improved conversion rate.

Heading

Overall improvement in backend efficiency

Outcome

Through the feature optimizations we did, the backend efficiency increases and led to increase in profit.

API & Microservices

Cloud & DevOps

Digital Design & Branding

Digital Prototyping

Performance Optimization

Product Scaling

Support & Maintenance

Team Augmentation

UI Design & Implementation

Web Development

Browserstack

Confluence

Docker

Drupal 9

Elasticsearch

GIT

Google Cloud

Headless Drupal

JIRA

JMeter

MySQL

Postman

React

Selenium

Edtech

Implementation of a state of the art fan builder

admin — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 11:43:34 +0000

Implementation of a state of the art fan builder admin Mon, 01/02/2023 - 11:43

End-to-end platform upgradation and implementation of an advanced custom fan configuration wizard for a US based ceiling fan retailer

Retail & Ecommerce

USA

UI/UX redesign

Backend Development

Ubercart to Drupal Commerce Migration

Fan builder wizard implementation

Performance optimization & SEO

Drupal 7

Elasticsearch

Acquia Cloud

GITLabs

JIRA

Confluence

Browserstack

The client initially started looking for a development team to help them fix some backend issues that their marketing team had raised. They spoke to multiple vendors and did extensive calls with them to understand the company background and technical capabilities. During once such call with our team, they brought up a few fundamental issues like UI/UX improvement and fan builder layout, and we suggested them some strategies for improvement that we already researched out during our review of the portal. This impressed them, and as the discussion progressed, it became evident that the present set up was not optimal and needed to be replaced in favour of a better system. Our team was chosen because we were able to identify these issues first hand, and instead if just focussing on the requirement that they gave us, were able to bring something more to the table that had the potential to create a deep business impact.

The client is America's largest Independent Ceiling Fan Retailer, since 1979. They manufacture their own brand of ceiling fans and these are sold through their 30-corporately owned retail locations, 10-independently owned & operated dealer locations, select lighting showrooms and online through their corporate website, which we were contracted to rebuild, redesign and improve.

When the client initially reached out to us, the client’s portal had a vast array of fans and fan accessories, but the portal was poorly designed with a primitive and slow fan builder wizard. This resulted in a high bounce rate and low customer engagement, resulting in steep revenue loss. Moreover, they were running a web store based on Drupal 6 + Ubercart, which was already an old technology and a nightmare in terms of management and backend operations. During the discovery workshops conducted by us, we evaluated and identified all the bottlenecks successfully, and proposed necessary solution to the client. We were entrusted with the project, and our team successfully transformed the portal into a modern online fan store - fast and easy to navigate, with a state of the art fan builder that was extremely easy to use. Once main development was completed, we were given charge of maintaining the portal and ongoing feature improvements.

44 store locations

7000 fan models

40 years in business

To begin with, it seemed the main issue was the lack of a coherent and effective UI/UX. The UX was old and not appealing to retain customers, leading to an extremely high bounce rate. But a deeper review also made it clear that the backend architecture was old, and was not capable of handling the growing data for new models and accessories. So an backend upgradation to Drupal 7 + Drupal commerce (from Drupal 6 + Ubercart) was agreed upon.

Their present website consisted of about 30,000 products including fan bundles, fans and accessories like light kits, downrods etc. We too up the daunting task of migrating these from Ubercart to Drupal Commerce. While migrating was taking place, the client's marketing team also wanted to incorporate a better product bundle mechanism, with features like option for admin to mark if a product can be individually bought or only available as a part of the bundle, product single price as well as bundle price, product bundle discounts as per bundle configuration.

Also, the general site migration needed to be done from Drupal 6 - 7 with all contents (about 10,000 nodes and blog articles).

However, as mentioned earlier one of the most important feature that now needed to be re-designed and re-developed was the fan builder mechanism. In their present site, they had a very basic version of the fan builder, but they wanted some serious revamp of the functionality to make it more appealing and more GUI based.

And our team was up for the challenge. We delivered a state of the art, fast and intuitive fan builder to them. Each of the steps was divided into layers and options in each layer were derived out of the choices the user made in the previous steps. Also, at the end of all the steps, the user was able to download a compiled fan image to be able to have a final look to and share it with their friends and family. Admin had full control and be able to choose which products appeared in each step and how it would vary and interact based on different user choices. Also, in the initial step, users could optionally upload an image of their own room, to see how the fan would look in their own room environment.

Needless to say, the overall UI/UX improvement we did to the portal led to an increase in conversion rate and reduced the bounce rate drastically. But we believe we created an even bigger impact through the fan builder implementation. When building a site using a framework like drupal, it’s more than just a content management system and it should be more of an advanced configuration system as well. With this new system, the client was amazed how easily they could manage not only the webstore, but the products that go into the fan builder. They could literally manage each and every aspect of the layer attributes, position of a layer over its predecessors and the discount pricing for accessories going into the fan builder. Also, the client was impressed with not only the quality of work but also the communication and improvement suggestions our team brought to the table.

Once the main development was done, we had already forged a solid relationship with the client's team. They continued to make additional development changes, and finally after several phases of development, the project entered into maintenance. We continue to maintain the portal to this day, and continue to fulfil additional feature requests that they come up with from time to time.

Dan's Fan Testimonial

We take a lot of pride in not only ensuring a flawless execution, but also smart strategy and consulting in order to solve complex technical challenges. The outdated portal the client had, negatively affected the user experience leading to a loss of revenue and customer trust. Our team not only came up with an impressive UI for the entire site and executed the entire migration flawlessly, but redesigned their legacy fan-builder setup completely. These improvements led to a 40% increase in conversion rate and brought down the bounce rate below 30%.

Phased development, ongoing maintenance

Dan's Fan Testimonial II

Based on the outcome of the discovery workshop, the major challenges that were identified were the following:

Drupal 6 was old and already end-of-life, and hence needed to be migrated to Drupal 7.
The ecommerce store needed to be ported from Ubercart (with about 30,000 fans and fan accessories) to Drupal Commerce with enhanced features.
Create a much improved version of their fan builder feature which allows visitors to compile various parts of the fan (like motor, blades, light kits, downrods) through an interactive graphical interface.
Overall UI/UX Redesign of the entire portal to make it more user friendly and interactive.

Heading

40% increase in conversion rate

Outcome

With all the backend and frontend changes, the overall performance of the portal increased, leading to an improved conversion rate.

Heading

bounce rate reduction to 30%

Outcome

With the UI/UX improvement that we did, the bounce rate reduced considerably, thus ensuring more traffic retention and increased ROI

Heading

An improved fan builder mechanism

Outcome

The fan builder was transformed completely from a old legacy system to an improved, easy to use mechanism that was loved by the customers.

Digital Prototyping

E-Commerce Strategy & Implementation

Product Design Strategy

Product Scaling

UI Design & Implementation

UX Consulting & Audit

Web Development

Apache SOLR

Browserstack

Confluence

CSS

Drupal 8

GIT

Google Cloud

HTML

JIRA

jQuery

MySQL

Retail & E-commerce