Website Design and Custom Development for kidzxplor.com

The kidzxplor team came to Cadence Labs with a vision of launching a startup that would allow parents & kids to drop in on local classes and activities for one monthly fee. They needed help with everything from branding, design, wireframing, and developing their new website and app.

Cadence Labs took on the challenge and created a unique system that combines not only WordPress and Magento, but also includes a partner portal for class providers, recurring membership subscriptions and booking system.

For the client we used WordPress as the CMS so they can easily update the main website, blog and manage their content. On the development side, we used Magento as the eCommerce platform to help us speed up development and reduce costs.

On the frontend of the website we created an “app-like” design that is fully responsive. Partners can log on to upload their classes and spots for booking. Customers can sign up for a flat monthly fee and then immediately start booking their child in classes. We even submitted the finished site to the app stores and the app is now available on both Google and Apple’s stores.

Let’s take a deeper look at this design and development project!

Branding + Design

To get started and hone in on the client’s idea, Cadence Labs worked through a discovery project with kidzxplor. This project allowed us to research different options for building their platform and provide them with accurate estimates for each component of the site.

Next, we created a variety of design options for the client to choose from for branding. It was important to capture that fun “kid” look while not making things so silly that wouldn’t appeal to the parents. We helped the client choose a color scheme, branding images, icons and more for their brand guide.

Once the branding was finalized we moved forward with creating a landing page to promote and collect email signups. We used this landing page as a template for how the site would look after launch. Key components such as the homepage and slide in menu were worked through in this step.

Finally, we created a series of wireframes for the client to review. This allowed the client to see how their final project could function and provided us an opportunity to map out the functionality we would need to build. One of these wireframe mockups is included on the right. You can see how this page turned out on the live site by clicking the button below.

Custom Development

Once the wireframes were approved by the client we moved into the development phase of the project. There were several key components of functionality that the client needed us to customize for them as Magento does not have subscriptions, booking capabilities or a partner portal out of the box.

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Subscriptions

Our first goal was to customize Subscribe Pro to give the client the membership type billing capabilities they needed for their website. We created a membership product for the subscription and forced a discount on it for multiple children. Then we customized the emails and other components to match the client’s branding.

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Classes & Booking

Next we needed to create the class and booking component of the site. For this we created a custom product type to represent classes. Each class has a variety of schedules and spots that can be booked by a customer. We also included the ability to add these classes to your calendar, filter classes by age, type or time, and see more information about the provider of the class.

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Partner Portal

Partners needed a way to upload their classes and schedules to the kidzxplor site. We build a frontend interface for partners to log into to manage all of their information and availability. This includes uploading information about their company, information about classes and the spots available for each class.

The Results

The new site is up and running now! We’ve been monitoring it now for a couple weeks and are keeping our eyes on the results in tools like Google Analytics and Webmaster tools.

New customers are signing up, subscriptions are processing correctly and partners are now adding their own classes to the system. Since the launch we’ve added on some features like a Refer a Friend program, sign up pages for other cities, filters for children’s age groups and more!

At the end of the day our discovery project helped us make an extremely accurate quote for this project. The client is thrilled with the results and we came in under budget allowing us to add on additional features.

Interested In Working with Cadence Labs?

Do you need help with your Magento or WordPress site? Or are you looking for an agency that can help your company build it’s idea from the ground up? We’re a team that specializes in custom eCommerce builds and we have a team of expert Magneto developers right here in Colorado.

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