about Client
O.K. Serwis: Website and booking system integration for a network of car repair shops
Having 300 car repair shops across the entire country is a big challenge. Our aim was to facilitate the booking process for repair shop appointments and present the offer in a completely new way.
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Project hours:
650
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Industry:
automoto
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Main technology & Integrations:
WordPress, Dedicated ERP System, API PinMeTo, VIN decoder system
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Services:
web design | web development
Introduction
O.K. Serwis is a network of car repair shops that brings together mechanics from all over Poland. The goal of the O.K. Serwis community (a brand belonging to Inter-Team) is to develop and maintain high service standards. The car repair shops offer comprehensive repairs for cars of all makes, using tested parts and consumables. Customers have trusted the experts at O.K. Serwis since 1998.
The starting point for the project
The main tasks during the creation of the new website were:
- Including the presentation of services and promotions. These two elements were not present in the old website;
- Designing a convenient appointment booking process with a search engine for car repair shops located on a map of Poland.
When designing the UX and web design from scratch, we had to keep in mind that the new website should be intuitive and trustworthy for customers. The booking process had to be designed to collect as much information as possible from the user to send to the ERP system and the customer support person on the hotline. Therefore, the appointment booking form is broken down into several steps. In each step, we ask for: the date and time of the appointment, preferences for the car workshop (location, range of services, pricing), and car details. During the booking process, it is possible to take advantage of promotions. More information about promotions can be found on the homepage, on the car repair shops subpages, and in the "Promotions" section. The same applies to the presentation of services, which is important not only from a sales perspective but also in terms of good SEO positioning.
The goals and perspective at the start of the project
- Creating an algorithm to display appropriate promotions on the respective subpages of the workshops;
- The ability to access the booking system from four places: the homepage, the workshop search engine, the promotions subpage, and the workshop subpage;
- Displaying car repair shops on a Google map as well as in list form, with the ability to filter by services, opening hours, and the presence of a price list;
- The presentation of car repair shops is based on integration with the PinMeTo API. To avoid the difficulties associated with entering information for 300 car repair shops, we pulled the necessary data from the external tool, PinMeTo. The appointment booking process itself includes integration with the VIN decoder system to avoid asking the user to enter many details about the car. The booking is ultimately sent to the dedicated Inter-Team ERP system.
The Approach
In the case of Inter-team, we decided to implement the web design using a time & material approach. The conceptual and creative part of the project allowed us to discuss those purely technical aspects as well. Creating mock-ups and the actual design helps to understand the client's requirements regarding functionality. Therefore, after completing the artistic part, at the client's request, we agreed to switch to a fixed price model for the development part.
This change in approach required the creation of several comprehensive specifications, which represented a significant shift at the end of the project but helped both parties in the acceptance and launch of the final product, keeping both budget and timeline under control. This change from a time & material approach to a fixed price model was certainly a challenge for our project manager. Regarding other challenges, we have detailed them above.
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Geolocation
None of us likes to engage in obvious tasks, right? We've filled in our email addresses, names, and home addresses in dozens of forms and generally, we don't do it very willingly... One reason is security concerns, and the other is laziness/boredom from performing overly simple tasks. But what if a website already knows our location, so we don't have to enter our city? This is a great convenience and personalization of content reception. For this reason, for the O.K. Service website, we use the Google API, which enables IP identification, thereby allowing automatic retrieval of information about the user's current location. This functionality can already be used on the homepage. Simply allow the browser to access location data, then fill in the date and time of the visit to the car repair shop to start the booking process. The user's location is also fetched on the map used to search for car rapair shops. There, we also allow sorting the list of workshops in order from the one closest to the user.
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Advertising and Referral System
Having the status of an expert in the automotive industry provides the opportunity to recommend the best solutions to your clients. To do this effectively, it is worthwhile to equip yourself with an advertising system that will also be appreciated by partners and advertisers. For O.K. Service, we prepared two solutions aimed at promoting content in places chosen by the content manager. The CMS system allows for adding a slider with recommendations or a full-width banner on any subpage (in any location). Both systems involve uploading a graphic creation to the CMS and defining a hyperlink. The referral module is dedicated to materials worth sharing regardless of their monetization potential. The advertising module, on the other hand, is a tool that enables monetization by providing basic functionalities such as setting publication/display dates for ads and delivering information on display and click statistics. For this service, full traffic statistics are not collected in the popular Google Analytics, but in the Microsoft 360 tool.
Summation
In six months, we built a website that gathers information about 300 workshops across Poland. Another project in progress aims to provide easy booking for training sessions for professionals in the automotive industry. We are pleased to have provided a new online presence for a company in the automotive sector, and we continue to maintain and improve O.K. Service under a maintenance agreement.
