Project Description

Early Years Hub is an initiative by a leading North West health and safety training company. They teamed up with a specialist in early years education to offer a variety of sector-specific training courses. They wanted a responsive website design that would showcase the courses on offer and the various testimonials they had received from many happy clients.

Images of the Early Years Hub responsive website on different devices
First steps

In order to control costs we approached this project in “phases”, with phase one being a multi-page WordPress site showcasing the courses on offer. This comprised a number of pages introducing the company, the trainers and their specialisms and the courses on offer. It also featured an annual ticket-only networking event called “The Hub” which the company ran every year.

Early Years Hub CPD and networking event webpage screenshot
Early Years Hub training course calendar screenshot for June 2020
Event Booking and Ticketing

Phase 2 of this project was to set up online booking and ticketing for training courses. To do this we installed WooCommerce, added events ticketing and calendar functions and linked up the company’s PayPal account. We added a calendar page so visitors can see all the course every month, or filter for the ones they want. We even added a countdown widget showing what the next course is and when it starts! Customers get an automated ticket email with a QR code that can be scanned on arrival at the course.

Online Training

With the difficulty in arranging face-to-face training made so much worse by the Coronavirus outbreak, the company needed to offer online training solutions. They had already decided that this route was going to be important for their growth plan, so we added a Learning Management System (LMS) to the site and started to build training course that users can work their way through in their own time at home. Best of all, these are automatically linked to the payment system, so no human intervention is necessary. This means courses can be sold and taken 24/7 with no extra staff needed.

Early Years Hub Online Learning Course screenshot
Early Years Hub Safeguarding Hub restricted content for members screenshot
Members only content

The most recent phase of this site has been the design of a “members only” portal. Entitled “Safeguarding Hub”, this portal allows signed-up members to have access to factsheets, CPD material, exclusive video content and more. Customers sign up for different levels of membership depending on the size of their organisation, with different membership plans offering different levels of access and differentiated content. Memberships are renewed automatically on a subscription unless cancelled by the member.

Early Years Hub Logo

I began working with Andrew on the design and creation of our Early Years Hub website some 3+ years ago. Andrew was able to quickly grasp the purpose and focus of our business extremely well and subsequently develop a distinct website that met our needs as an early years training and consultancy company. I would highly recommend his work, his skill as a designer but also his ability to create a website that enables brand development and more importantly customer engagement.

Rachel Buckler, Early Years Hub