New Web Application Project: Exemplars Online Library – Downloadable Education Materials
When I announced the launch of the new Exemplars website earlier this year, I made passing mention of an upcoming eCommerce project and pay-per-click campaigns, but I neglected to mention the custom “Online Library” project we currently have in the works. The goal of this project is essentially to modernize how teachers gain access to teaching materials purchased by their school districts and administrators. Currently Exemplars ships teaching materials to schools on CD-ROM, which obviously made the most sense in the past, but is no longer necessary in the digital age. These days we all demand immediate access to anything and everything on our computers, so why should teaching materials be any different?
Instead of leaving teachers chasing CDs around their schools (and potentially losing them), the Exemplars Online Library will allow teachers to log in to the system from any computer with an internet connection and download the teaching materials their district has purchased. On the administrative end, Exemplar will be able to manage which materials each district or individual school has access to based on which package they purchased. Couple this new system with the soon-to-be-completed online store and Exemplars is set to truly take their business to the next level.
Our development and programming team has enjoyed partnering with Exemplars to work on their Online Library project because it once again allows them to showcase their custom web application development skills. A lot of firms focus strictly on regular websites, which certainly still have their place, but our team specializes in not only traditional websites but custom web solutions to meet very specific business challenges for individual clients. We currently have a number of other custom web application projects in the works so stay tuned because we’ll be making announcements here soon.
As for our PPC campaigns and the eCommerce project, I have a few updates, but as a bit of background, here’s an excerpt from my March post that mentioned these projects:
In addition to launching the new website for Exemplars, we’ve also partnered with Exemplars for an eCommerce project. VDW will be redeveloping Exemplars’ online store to modernize both the look and the checkout process.
Vermont Design Works will also begin managing Google Adwords PPC advertising for Exemplars in the coming weeks. Like many of our clients, Exemplars has run some pay-per-click ads on their own, but this is often an added responsibility for employees that already have a full schedule. As always, our goal is to help free up our clients’ time by building and optimizing our PPC campaigns to significantly increase both sales and leads, while lowering the costs of generating both.
After the first 3 months of the Google Adwords campaigns we set up in Exemplars’ existing account, we saw a 2,233.33% (not a typo) rise in Exemplars membership sign-ups generated by PPC – obviously an amazing success and we did it without any changes in budget. The success was due to things like extensive keyword research, properly grouped keywords, carefully written ads, and landing page optimization. After the 3-month testing and campaign optimization phase and at the end of the 2011/12 school year, we paused our campaigns for the summer. When the school year started back up this fall, Exemplars was able to unpause their own campaigns and have been able to allow them to run successfully without any changes after the extensive work we put in optimizing them last spring.
On the eCommerce side of things, we’re currently working on the online store and expect to launch in early 2013. We’ll post a follow-up announcement when it goes live.
Does your company (or organization) need a new web site or custom web application? We’d love to discus your project with you. Send us a message today and we can set up a time to chat.
Today we’re really excited to announce our renewed partnership with the
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