We designed and built the Mendip Hills National Landscape website many, many, moons ago and have looked after it ever since. We helped them rebrand from Mendip Hills AONB last year as part of the nationwide National Landscapes transition and handled all of their web strategy around the domain change / DNS and SEO, as well as the actual cosmetic changes on the website. The design changes were done with a light touch so as to suit budgets, and went live the day the news broke nationally about the changes.

More recently, the team at Mendip Hills NL published a book! And it’s always very exciting when a client publishes a book! And so they needed a way to sell it on their website.

We put forward a couple of options – varying from an hour or so’s work to a day – and they opted for the larger option which was a full Woo shop. And yes, I said a day, as it doesn’t take long to put a shop on an existing WordPress site, if you’re happy with a basic look and feel. The smaller options were just around PayPal buttons but initially the team felt they needed a more sophisticated system as there were question marks around how the funds needed to be split between different parties involved with the creation of the book, and Woo helped cover that. Plus, it’s now very simple for them to add (and remove) additional products as they need to – which they have been doing when they’ve got pin badges in stock to sell.

We set up the shop, helped them with delivery options, advised them on terms, and discussed additional features around voucher codes and mailing list hook ups which they might come back to another day. We lightly branded the emails that the site sends so they’re in keeping with their National Landscape colour palette rather than the default Woo purple, and placed various test orders so that they could see how things worked from both their side and the customers.

They launched the shop last Autumn and immediately sold lots of books to their local fans! The book, titled “Walking the darker side of Mendip” features 10 walks to do across the hills, ranging from 2 to 5 miles in length. The relatively short length of the walks, and the way it brings to life stories about Vikings, Kings and witches makes it educational and fascinating for children, which is why it was launched in time for October half term and will be promoted again this Autumn – in time for Halloween!