As web development, maintenance & support specialists, a lot of our clients want to put their websites in our capable hands. And we love managing everything on their behalf. But sometimes, we have clients who need just a little nudge in the right direction before taking over the reins. And we’re always happy to help, developing easy-to-manage websites that anyone can care for with confidence.
Le Loop is the perfect example.
Welcome to Le Loop
Le Loop is a fantastic company that allows cyclists to ride the exact route of the Tour de France – a week before the professionals. The team arranges everything for the riders – from hotels to mechanics to medics – which is quite a task on its own. But even more impressively, they do it all while raising money for an incredible cause; a charity (The William Wates Memorial Trust) that helps disadvantaged young people.
To say we’re in awe is an understatement!
We’ve been proudly working with Le Loop for 10 years now, beginning in 2013 when their existing web development company shut their doors. What started off as a small job, providing hosting and offering help desk support, eventually turned into a long-term relationship. We’ve been on hand to help out wherever we can, like automating administrative tasks to reduce workloads by 90%. And to be completely honest, we’ve also been on hand for some not-strictly-work-related tasks, too…
“We celebrated our 10-year Le Loop-iversary by going for a meal and a good old knees-up in Bristol at the end of January. Long-term relationships like this are what we strive for. They’re just lovely!”
– Zoey O’Neill, Soto Managing Director
But it’s not all play. Le Loop’s Sarah and Kate came to us wanting an upgrade to their website. They wanted it to load faster, perform better on a wider range of devices, and offer a more user-friendly Rider Zone. Here, users could easily find information relevant to the type of ride they’d signed up for. And most importantly of all, they wanted to be able to manage the website themselves.
Luckily, we knew exactly what to do.
Membership site development
Our solution was to develop a brand new membership system, providing riders with access to tailored information and customised resources depending on their membership level and actions.
For example, after making a payment, riders are then able to access the medical forms that need to be completed before the ride. After that, it’s the Rider’s Shop, where they can arrange things like bike transport. It guides riders through everything they need to do to prepare for their ‘loop’, rather than throwing out a load of resources all at once, much of which wouldn’t be relevant at the time. This keeps the site faster and smoother, and ultimately provides a much better user experience.
But there was still one thing left to do. We needed to ensure Kate and Sarah could manage the site independently. They wanted to handle content management on their own so they could easily update information whenever they wanted, without having to call us for every little thing.
The solution to that was to use short codes.
With short codes, Kate and Sarah can manage content pretty much effortlessly, providing the right information, at the right time, to the right people. It means they’re able to limit which members and riders see which types of content, so they can deliver the most relevant information at all times.
“They wanted to control and manage the whole system themselves… and they do! We’re just here to support the help desk and the odd feature request. The rest of the time, they plod along without us!”
– Zoey O’Neill, Soto Managing Director
“We have a really great website which people can use in the way they want to, and we’re able to manage most of it ourselves. And it definitely doesn’t hurt that it doesn’t cost too much!”
– Sarah Perry, Le Loop
Another satisfied client!
In 8 weeks, we’d achieved everything we needed to. Le Loop’s website is faster, and offers a much better on-site experience for riders, no matter what loop they’re doing, or what device they’re using.
“Our experience with Soto has been great from the very beginning. Zoey listens. And most importantly, she’s really quick to understand our problem/issue/situation, which means her solutions are always spot on. Of course, there are lots of people who deserve credit for how well we’re doing, but I hope Zoey and the Soto team know that they’re playing a massive role in our success.”
– Sarah Perry, Le Loop
