Chelsea Town

Product Designer

Rock Gym Pro
Website

The world's leading rock gym front desk software

Project Brief

Create a completely new marketing website for the leading rock climbing gym software, Rock Gym Pro. Replace the old WordPress website with a custom site built on business parameters and marketing insights.

Product Research

My Role

My role in this project was project manager, UI/UX designer, and engineer. It was my job to create the design compositions, make the graphics and color schemes and then put everything into code using the framework Laravel with HTML, CSS/Sass, JavaScript and PHP.

Parameters

  • Replace the old WordPress website with a new custom website.
  • Work with Marketing to come up with a layout framework and implement the product copy.
  • Devise an understandable pricing page and feature list for a complex product offering.
  • Create the graphics, images, icons and color schemes.
  • Build five custom contact forms with interactive question selections. Implement Google's reCAPTCHA.
  • Work with a photographer for custom images.
  • Maintain the website with all future changes.

Stakeholders

  • The customer benefits from having a website which is focused with visual examples of the software, a clearly outlined pricing plan, a list of all options laid out for each plan, and access to personal demos with the Support team.
  • The CEO, CTO and Founder requested the completion of the project
  • Marketing and Business Development
  • Support Sales Team
  • Technical Support Team
  • Engineering

Initial Proposal


Competitive Analysis

Rock Gym Pro is by far the most popular software for indoor climbing gyms. RGP was known for excellent support, as well as the extremely versatile front desk application, and has kept Rock Gym Pro highly sought after. However, RGP does have legitimate competition. In order to stay on top of the market, revamping the website was key for bringing in new users and exploring other verticals.

Staying Competitive

  • By offering a modern marketing website to new customers the company was able to help ensure confidence in the product overall.
  • The organized pricing for both locally-hosted and cloud software removed a possible blocker to signing up for an account.
  • Rock Gym Pro gives exploratory and training demos to new and existing customers. Answering questions through the website lightened the load on the demo team.
  • Customer Support was assisted by the website as it could be used as a reference tool to field incoming questions from customers.
  • The advanced contact pages allowed for more informative data to get to the support team so that they could better help out the current clients and potential clients.

Project Development

Development Stages

  1. Work together with the CTO/CEO/Founder to discuss the desired end results for the website.
  2. Devise rough outlines in Google Docs for the pages that were included and start fleshing out the details for each section with Marketing.
  3. Prepare design compositions for the general UI/UX.
  4. Begin writing the code for the webpage. Meet on a regular basis with my Marketing partner to cross check the progress of the website.
  5. Finish the bare bones architecture for all parts of the website. Begin filling in the copy and content.
  6. Create the graphics to sync with the content on each page.
  7. Develop the advanced contact pages and sync with CRM.
  8. Bring in the help of Support for fact-checking more complex parts of the pricing and account pages.
  9. Arrive at the first draft of the finished website. Request final comments from all pertinent stakeholders.
  10. Make any last adjustments if any forgotten items are found.
  11. The website goes live!

Climbing mecca Smith Rock


Final Reflections

It was an honor to be able to be responsible for the website of so beloved a product by the close community of climbers around the world. If there is a software out there that is generic for many industries, then it will do - however, what climbing gym owners appreciated about Rock Gym Pro was the insider knowledge coming from a group that largely loved climbing.

In order to develop the website, I knew that it had to reflect the same care that the owner placed in the front desk software, as well as the care that was found by the group of fanatically great support people. If I accomplished it, it's not up to me to say, but I gave it my best shot!