National Trust

National Trust

As a charity, the National Trust look after some of the most historic buildings, landmarks and places of special interest England, Wales and Northern Ireland has to offer. To ensure they don’t have more visitors than they can cope with, some locations have restrictions on parking. Greenway and Stoneywell are two such locations that require a dedicated car park booking system where parking spaces need to be booked in advance of people visiting.

Background

With an out of date car park booking system which had been in place for several years that included four separate websites, a back office, and front end for both the Greenway and Stoneywell locations, the system had been in need of an upgrade for some time.

Searching for an easier and far less complicated way of doing things, and with the contract with the current developers coming to an end, the National Trust were looking for a new agency to host, update and manage the car park booking system in its entirety.

The Brief

In taking on the management of an updated car park booking system, we were brought in to look into the following areas:

• Front end redesign
  A redesign for both the Greenway and Stoneywell front end to allow a seamless transition from the main National Trust website to the car park booking system
• Domains and Hosting
  To transfer the nter.org.uk and nt.leics.org.uk domains and hosting to a safer and more secure hosting environment
• SSL Certificates
  To install SSL certificates across all four websites to ensure customer data is kept safe and secure.

The Process

By moving the four individual websites onto a new hosting environment, we were able to assess the files and database and make suggested improvements to the National Trust marketing team. In late 2017, the first of several updates were applied, making the system more robust. This was followed by several new features also being added, based on internal feedback received by the National Trust to help make administering the websites easier.

The car park booking system has proved a huge success since its launch in early 2018. In July and August, bookings reached nearly 3,000 visitors per month with roughly half booking through the website and the other half being processed over the phone by the National Trust team.

With 100% site uptime, the booking process has now been streamlined for both visitors and National Trust staff, ensuring car park spaces can be booked and managed quickly and efficiently.

Find out more

Priority Pixels are a creative design and digital marketing agency. If you’d like more information about how we can help with your website, including SSL security, contact us today! Email us on: hello@prioritypixels.co.uk, or call our team on 01626 245061.