About Choose A Challenge
Choose A Challenge is the UK’s leading provider of fundraising challenges, offering adventurers the chance to raise money for charities with excursions to Kilimanjaro, Everest basecamp and Machu Picchu amongst others. The company feels that adventure is the key to life, and that the ideal way to travel places must be for a reason. They want to leverage the power of adventure for noble causes that would help humanity. The website encourages and provides a platform for people to participate in charity challenges.
Their booking engine and events management system lie at the heart of their business, but in early 2018, they were experiencing ‘growing pains.’ The client approached chilliapple looking for an expert Laravel partner to support their ambitious development roadmap.
Technologies Used
We worked on their existing website to identify and resolve various bugs. Their website was based on the Laravel framework. Our Laravel certified experts resolved the imperfections of the website code and also integrated payment and email solutions.
Services we offered
We worked on multiple aspects of the site to ensure the business witnessed optimum growth. We also identified several bugs and issues in their website and took the necessary steps to remove them from the code.
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Relational database setup
We used a suitable relational database model for their business. This was done to ensure maximum data accuracy and provide an intuitive way to represent data. It also helps to store data efficiently and reduces the costs of data entry, storage, and retrieval.
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Notifications system development
This would allow them to communicate important information to customers, employees, or other stakeholders. Overall, this will drive growth by boosting engagement, driving sales, and enabling timely responses to critical events.
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Backend Modifications
The Laravel back-end has also undergone major enhancements for administrative users to manage both charities and their event attendees. This includes a feature to move users to alternative events if the original trip is overbooked, an event log collating failed payment installments, and email triggers to customers when such failures occur.
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Technical Integration for Choose A Challenge
We added the Stripe Payment gateway which would allow customers to pay in split or make complete payments. For enhancing the marketing capabilities of the platform, we added the Mailchimp email template to their site.
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Stripe Integration
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Mailchimp custom email template integration
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iGiving fundraising integration
Our Process
Choose A Challenge needed several modifications onto their website to ensure a good user experience. Their website lacked business-oriented features and they also needed a secure payment gateway for the business.
Requirements
Choose A Challenge came to us when their website was suffering from various bugs and issues. They needed Laravel partners to conduct website auditing and identify issues with the running site. Their business goal was to ensure smooth website performance and add various functional features that will enable customers with high UX. As a growing business, they also needed integration of a secure payment gateway that would entrust customers for conversion. There were also issues with the charity dashboard’s functioning, and the frontend failed to provide users with clarity on information.
Solutions
After migrating the site to a new and improved server, we investigated and resolved a number of urgent bug fixes on the legacy system, including instances of customers being double charged for payment installments. The features are available via the charity dashboard, for use by organisations including Mind and the Meningitis Research Foundation; they were also enhanced, enabling them to report on changes to fundraising targets and event attendance. Once the system was running smoothly, we moved on to a redesign of the front-end registration portal and purchase funnel to provide potential customers with clear and concise information about all aspects of the trip.
Results
The redesign of the registration portal has led to a significant reduction in purchase drop-offs, as customers receive a clearer view of the payment process and various trip extensions available to them throughout the checkout process. The upgrades to the Admin section have also helped keep staff on top of overdue or failed payments, and minimised the likelihood of trips being cancelled.
