A registration platform that takes over the manual work

How it started

This project came out of the work for Rembert Torhout Heren. Someone close to Sportiek saw what Ace had built there, the website and the social channels, and thought of us straight away when Sportiek needed a new website. Good work that gets seen is the best advertising. Sportiek runs youth sports camps in the school holidays, sports days for schools and groups, and rents out bouncy castles and sports equipment. Registrations are the heart of it: hundreds of parents who want to sign their children up for a camp, often on the same day and at the same hour.

A fresh start

Sportiek had a choice: build on the existing website, or start again. Together we chose a fresh start. That way we could build the platform from the ground up around the way Sportiek works: registering, paying, waiting lists, refunds and everything that follows, in one system, without compromises from the past. We chose Django with PostgreSQL, Tailwind for the styling, Mollie for payments, Mailgun for e-mail and Amazon S3 for files, hosted on Heroku. A stack we know, that is secure, and that grows with demand.

A first web shop, with a hard deadline

At the time this was the biggest challenge Ace had faced: we had never built a web shop. And not just any shop. Parents register several children at once, with a waiting list per camp when it is full, a payment through Mollie, a reservation that lapses when it is not paid, and refunds when a child cannot come after all. All of it backed up, because behind every registration is a family with holiday plans. On the first day of registrations, hundreds of people want a place in one particular camp at the same moment. The platform had to handle that, and be fair: first come, first registered. The deadline was 6 December, and there was little time. Many evenings and nights went into making it. On the day, everything was ready.

The first registration weekend

On the first registration weekend, hundreds of parents were ready at the same time. The platform handled the registrations, the payments and the waiting lists without manual work, and every parent had a confirmation in their inbox right away. That weekend's revenue was 15 percent higher than the year before. And that matters: about 90 percent of Sportiek's revenue comes from that one weekend. In the weeks after, more children registered than ever: anyone looking for a place could now find one at any moment, from their phone, without calling or e-mailing.

• 0%15%more revenue on the first weekend
• 0%90%of revenue comes from that weekend

Ready for an even bigger rush

For the next registration period we went a step further, so that the first-day rush runs smoothly for everyone. Creating an account is no longer possible during the registration period itself: parents do it beforehand, and on the day they only need to sign in and choose. A temporary queue with a counter spreads the simultaneous registrations, so everyone knows where they stand. And on the day, the camps open gradually, each at its own time, instead of all at once. The peak is spread over the day.

A camp in Bruges with places left

One sports camp in Bruges was filling up more slowly than the others. We ran a campaign on social media with short videos of the camp, aimed at parents nearby. At the same time we expanded the camp's page and optimised it for search engines, structured data included, so Google shows the camp with its date, place and price. Shortly after, the camp was fully booked. We have used the same approach since for any camp that could use a push.

Being found on Google

A site search engines understand: every camp page with structured data, a clear structure, fast pages and Google Search Console to follow what works. Anyone searching for sports camps in the region finds Sportiek. In sixteen months, over five thousand people clicked through from Google to sportiek.be, on more than 26,000 impressions. Nearly one in five who see Sportiek in the results clicks through.

• 05,130clicks from Google in sixteen months
• 026.5Kimpressions in the search results
• 0%19%click through to the site

Staff, rental and sports days

After the camps came three more modules. Staff apply through the site, with their details and diplomas, and follow the status of their application in their own account. Schools and groups request a sports day. And anyone who wants to rent a bouncy castle or sports equipment finds the offer and the terms in one place. All three are in use as intended, by Sportiek's team and by the people who work with them. To this day we hear that the website works much better and is easier to use than the previous one. That is always good to hear.