Returnloads.net case study

Goals
Return Loads
www.returnloads.net
Industry
Transport and Haulage
Returnloads.Net is dedicated to helping both hauliers and their customers
exchange information efficiently over the internet, helping them to save time and
money. A popular marketplace in the haulage industry since 2009, Returnloads.Net
tasked Crafted with redesigning its website with a more contemporary look and
feel, using a platform that would suport the company’s growth plans.
Whilst the exisiting version of Returnloads.Net already listed more than a thousand
loads per day on average, saving more than 150,000 HGV journeys in the last
12 months alone, the new site aimed to see a further reduction in the number
of empty journeys across the UK as its membership grows. It has been estimated
that the UK Haulage industry could save more than 40 million miles of empty
journeys by making use of the spare capacity of their vehicles returning to base
vacant. This could cut carbon emissions in the UK by as much as 8 per cent and
significantly contribute to the UK‘s carbon emissions pledge.
Partner
Crafted
32 Fore Street
Ipswich
Suffolk IP4 1JU
United Kingdom
www.crafted.co.uk
The new website would feature additional functionality, including an online review
and rating system, better email notifications and search, as well as tiered
membership levels (basic, standard and ultimate) offering different price plans and
levels of access. Using the robust Kentico CMS, the new system would enable
Returnloads.Net to regularly upload content, grow its membership and easily
expand its website in the future. The refreshed site would be built in asp.net and
enable Returnloads.Net to streamline admin processes through better user
management and reporting, with users able to access their invoices online.
Tom Gillman
01473 213222
tom.gillman@crafted.co.uk
Challenges
As the system needed to replace
an existing website, whilst moving
this forward in terms of design and
functionality, Crafted had some
specific challenges to overcome.
Although users would be able to
access more content and
functionality on the new site,
Crafted still needed to ensure that
it would be easy to use. Integration
with a payment gateway and online
invoicing system also had to be
managed, with the adding
of content management from
an admin point of view (via CMS Desk) and the perspective of a member via
a bespoke account section using the API (non CMS Desk).
Solution
The redesigned and re-built ReturnLoads.Net is built using the Kentico ASPX
template model and is integrated with the Recurly recurring billing platform.
The ASPX template model was chosen because it provided the full flexibility
required in terms of layout, business logic and integration with Recurly.
As the site needed to have access to UK town data and geo-coordinates without
requiring calls to external third party services, an address database was purchased,
with more than 40,000 rows imported into the CMS Tree Nodes using the Kentico
Import Tool. The client also desired that CMS Deck was used for their
administration purposes only, so Crafted built the members ‘account’ section using
a completely custom user interface in keeping with the look and feel
of the website, using the Kentico API to fetch and store content in the CMS tree.
The account section lets users manage all of their content and settings, for example
contact details, password, posts, notification preferences, reviews and company
profile. A single Tree Node was used for each page (opposed to one for each user),
coupled with a bespoke ASPX Page Template for each page to provide the custom
layout and integration via the API.
As Returnloads.Net had already built up an impressive membership base prior to
the site rebuild, it was necessary to import users and their settings
from the previous website so that users could log-in to the new website on the day
it went live using their existing username and password and see all of their settings
automatically available. To enable this, Crafted built custom routines to import
users, roles and membership data into the CMS tree and Kentico membership
system (users and roles), which provided the full flexibility required to implement
business logic as part of the import process.
To cater for the more than 30,000 email notifications sent by Returnloads.Net
every day, Crafted also used Kentico email templates to provide easily editable
email templates. The Kentico email queue was used for the sending of the emails,
with the site using Amazon SES as the SMTP provider.
Recurly was chosen as the recurring billing provider, and, by using the ASPX
Template model, Crafted was able to easily integrate Kentico with the Recurly API
to take initial card payments through the sign-up process and set-up a recurring
subscription.
As the client wanted to maintain a high level of control over the website’s content,
the new website stores all news, ‘brochureware’ pages such as about us and
contact us, and all website data, within the CMS Tree. This means that all
of the content, as well as the data without a user interface (page template), can be
edited if required by Returnloads.Net’s administration team via CMS Desk. Site
settings have been built into the Custom Settings to ensure that they can also be
edited by the ReturnLoads.Net’s administration team.
Crafted built a custom CMS
Module and linked it from
the CMS Desk menu to provide
the search and management
pages needed to meet
the requirements of the client.
As a result, the administration
team is only exposed to
the data that it needs and do
not necessarily need to know
where content is stored within
the CMS Tree hierarchy. This
means that staff are still able
to go back to the CMS Tree
in order to find/edit the data
directly if required.
Key criteria for selecting Kentico CMS

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Strong content management features
Flexible and extensible architecture
Secure, scalable and robust solution
CMS Desk, providing an admin system out-of-the-box with user and role
management, content management, reporting and more