Combining ecommerce and elearning in one bespoke website

The brief

Advice Cloud are public sector procurement specialists and G-Cloud consultants with over 80 years of combined experience across all sectors. They work with both buyers and suppliers of Gov.Tech. Advice Cloud enables suppliers to sell their technology products and services to government and assist buyers in procuring innovative and citizens-centred technology solutions.

We were asked to redevelop Advice Cloud’s website and introduce ecommerce and elearning functionality to it. Advice Cloud was launching a new training product and needed the website to be able to facilitate the purchasing as well as delivery.

Their previous website was built with Joomla, but Advice Cloud was not happy with the CMS and wished to switch to WordPress. They also needed integrations with WooCommerce and learning management system (LMS) Sensei to incorporate the required ecommerce and elearning functionality to the site.

What we did

Front end

We worked with an external designer to re-fresh the Advice Cloud brand and developed the front-end shop and elearning pages for all devices.

The process was highly collaborative; for instance, we actively shared our expertise with the external designer. This was particularly appreciated by the Advice Cloud team. We feel that the strong collaboration between different parties was key in allowing us to enhance the user-friendliness of the final product. We also received positive feedback for the refreshed design of the blog with which the company had been facing issues in the past.

We worked closely with Advice Cloud whilst developing the ecommerce and elearning pages. To cut costs for the client we decided to use off-the-shelf solutions and customise them as much as possible. Luckily, Advice Cloud was very impressed with the results. The new pages reflect the brand and include all the design elements they requested.

Back end

This was a particularly interesting and challenging project from the start. From switching to a completely new CMS to integrating new elements to the back end. We needed to improve the brand identity and transfer it from Joomla to WordPress.

The complex configuration of the old website created some interesting challenges. Some of the basic elements of the website were developed as modules and plugins. Additionally, the Advice Cloud marketing team found it very difficult to manage the site. We provided them with a custom, yet easy-to-use WordPress site and ensured they have a proficient level of autonomy in managing it.

The second requirement was to work with the combination of WooCommerce and Sensei (which was the first time for us). We are pleased to say it works very well as it allows Advice Cloud to host their new elearning product and rest assured that the purchasing process runs smoothly.