The Cutting Edge Classroom
Website Design | E-commerce | Monthly Web Management
Getting Started with The Cutting Edge Classroom
John Alunni, Head Chef and Owner of The Cutting Edge Classroom, connected with Pilot Mountain Creative looking for help keeping his WordPress website up to date.
After a thorough review of his website and learning what business objectives Chef John needed it to accomplish, PMC suggested overhauling the entire site.
Now, Chef John's new website leverages a modern design, an improved WooCommerce checkout experience, and quality of life improvements to make his management team's lives easier when adding new classes or looking for customer information.
Optimizing the Site for Online Ticket Sales
The primary objective of The Cutting Edge Classroom's website is to sell digital tickets to in-person cooking classes. To make this work, PMC leveraged a mix of core WooCommerce features and advanced plugin configurations from The Events Calendar. This gave customers an intuitive view of upcoming classes that's easy to use on both mobile and desktop devices.
Designing A Better Checkout Experience
The redesign included streamlining the website's checkout process, converting it from the standard 3-step WooCommerce checkout to a sleek design that's integrated with Chef John's in-store POS system. Not only does the new checkout process help improve conversion rates on new ticket sales and reduce cart abandonment, but it makes it easier for management to track orders and important revenue data.
Streamlining the Safety Waiver Submission Process
Anyone attending a class at The Cutting Edge Classroom must complete and submit an online safety waiver. Chef John's previous website made it difficult for users to submit waivers online and did not carry submission data to the backend of the site. This meant that management had no idea if a customer had completed their waiver or not until the day of their class.
Pilot Mountain Creative added custom functionality to the WooCommerce order dashboard to collect a customer's waiver status at checkout and display that status with their order information. This helped management easily identify which customers had completed a waiver and which had not - before they ever showed up for class.
Optimizing for A Mobile Focused Design
With over 60% of web traffic coming from mobile devices on average, we knew it was essential to design The Cutting Edge Classroom’s site with a mobile-first mindset. For a business that relies on digital ticket sales and class registrations, a smooth mobile experience is key.
We reimagined the class list layout to make it easy for visitors to browse upcoming events on their phones - no pinching or zooming required. For content-heavy areas like the Cancellation and Class Policy page, we implemented anchor links so users can quickly jump to the information they need.
Staying Up to Date with Monthly Maintenance
Running a busy cooking school means wearing a lot of hats, especially in the fast-paced food and beverage industry. That’s why we partnered with Chef John and his team to provide ongoing website management services, giving them peace of mind and more time to focus on what they do best: creating unforgettable culinary experiences.
As part of our monthly website maintenance plan, we ensure their site stays updated, secure, and running smoothly. Chef John no longer has to worry about outdated plugins, website vulnerabilities, or missing out on important updates.
We also help drive more class registrations by adding seasonal pop-ups around key dates like Mother’s Day and Christmas - helping turn traffic into ticket sales.
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