Delivering a website that is First Class

We're approaching the one-year mark since launching the website for local business, First Class First Aid

When founder Rachael first reached out to us, just before summer 2023, she had reported that although she was on the first page of Google for a lot of her keywords, her enquiries were really down. A catch 22 we see again and again in digital marketing. Rachael, by her own admission, isn’t the most tech-savvy, but she quickly realised that the DIY website she built to get her business off the ground was starting to hold her back. So, a professional redesign was on the horizon and we were extremely grateful to be called in to help.

A personalised solution

If you didn’t guess already, Rachael is a first aid instructor, providing a warm and friendly learning environment with an interactive teaching style. Our very own management team, Phoebe and Emily can vouch that Rachael really knows her stuff, having recently joined one of her training sessions to receive a workplace qualification in first aid. Rachael not only provides accredited qualifications for employees but also training in basic life support, emergency paediatric first aid, first aiders refresher courses and even courses for school children.

One of the main improvements that Rachael wanted, other than increasing searchability, was to add the ability for users to browse, book and pay for these courses online. With such a modest scope, we knew that a full blown eCommerce site was probably overkill for this initial stage of the project. However, you don’t always need an eCommerce site to achieve what Rachael needed…

Online bookings with secure payment and ticket management

As we said above, going full ham eCom just felt like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. So, with a mindset to keep things cost effective for Rachael – not to mention easy to manage – we made use of an events calendar plugin instead. This allows courses to be added quickly and easily, with tickets purchased and paid for via a secure payment gateway. Ticket sales are then tracked via the website admin, giving an attendee list and key information. No more and no less. Essentially we were able to build Rachael the tool she needed that would maximise those conversations and work well in search.

In the practical day-to-day running of the business too, Rachael now has total control over the courses she advertises herself – she doesn’t need our input to keep the content up to date (although she knows we’re always here to help). Building websites that are easy to manage for the client is essential to get the most out of their investment and maximise potential. There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing a client utilise their new site with utmost confidence. Perhaps, Rachael, you were more tech savvy than you gave yourself credit.

Never mind DR ABC, how about DR SEO?

It was always clear that Rachael was dedicated to reaching her goals of maximising her digital presence. So, after about 9 months of running with the new site, when budget permitted, Rachel reached out to us again for stage 2… to soak up all local traffic.

With the new website, Rachael had seen a marked improvement in enquiries enabling her to factor in a marketing budget. We love to see it! Together the next step was to get First Class First Aid ranking not just on page 1, but position 1. Now we knew the website was working for her and converting customers, it was time to pump some energy into driving new users to the website. So, in August, Senior Digital Marketing Exec Ellie (or shall we call her Dr SEO) took care of Rachael’s onboarding and set up a digital marketing month on month retainer working on SEO and conversion optimisation.

All our marketers work very closely with their dedicated clients to understand their specific business goals and will work hard to advise them on the best route to success throughout each month with regular catch ups, strategy updates and data reports. Ellie and Rachael have already got off to a head start, since launch we’ve been writing engaging and well-written blog posts to encourage Google to crawl her site regularly. We have no doubt that Rachael’s efforts paired with Ellie’s knowledge, guidance and astute strategy planning in all areas of SEO, the pair will be raising a cup of coffee over an incredible first report come November.