Web Design Case Study: At The Bench

At The Bench is an online video training site for people interested in learning to make jewellery.

Overview

At The Bench needed a full-featured powerful membership solution that allowed them to stream secure video content to their members. The aim was to build a learning community that sparked creativity. It was also important that members were able to share their work within the community and for the team to support them with feedback.

Approach

We discussed the project at some length with Andrew and his team until we had a clear understanding about the functionality required and an idea of the look and feel they were after. We produced a series of mock-ups that illustrated the overall appearance of the site, along with its architecture and functionality, and then continued to work closely with Andrew to create the membership site he had envisaged.

Built on WordPress

The site is built on the WordPress platform so the content management system is stable, feature rich and easy to use. WordPress is also SEO friendly making it ideal for Google indexing.

Sales Led

The homepage displays key information from the outset. The introductory video provides a tour of the website and the benefits of joining are further illustrated as the user scrolls down the site.

Sign up options are readily available and for those not quite ready to join a Freeview option is clearly visible to encourage trying the site for free.

Finally, reviews from Trustpilot, the consumer review website, lets current members share their experiences to help convert potential customers into users.

Membership

The fully automated membership system allows free and paid access to content. Customers can make one-time payments, sign up to recurring subscriptions or access free content by simply registering.

Membership levels and downloadable materials are easily purchased through Credit Card and PayPal payment gateways.

Secure Videos

Training videos are hosted on Amazon S3 servers and delivered to users at fast speeds from any part of the world. The custom HTML5 video player is configured to securely play MP4 videos from Amazon S3 with links set to expire to ensure content cannot be shared with unauthorized users.

Project Area

The project area allows members to create, categorize and manage individual projects. As users explore available content they are able to collect video tutorials and assign them to projects for reference. Or if users are not quite ready to create projects they can add videos as Favourites.

Feedback from Andrew and the Team

At The Bench prides itself on being a friendly learning community so communication between the team and users is obviously encouraged. Members can use the feedback function to send photos and videos of projects and the team can reply in return.

The feedback notification system ensures that team and members are notified by email of all messages. Notifications are also clearly highlighted in the project dashboard area.

Members Gallery

All members have their own private image gallery to keep images for personal reference, to display in the Member Gallery or attach to feedback.

Built for Speed

A custom streamlined WordPress theme and carefully selected plugins ensure the site performs and delivers speed not only for usability but search engine ranking as well.

Results

At The Bench now has an end-to-end content delivery solution to provide secure content easily to its members. They have created an online learning community that supports fellow creatives.

Visit the site: At The Bench