School Link

The Client
School Link is an exciting scheme operated for the past ten years by The Book People. School Link offers schools large discounts off publisher's prices and also enables schools to earn free books.

School Link's aim is to make ordering children's books easy and affordable. Since launching, School Link has given £1.5 million worth of free books to schools throughout the UK.

The Objective
The Book People were keen to extend their current WebSphere Commerce framework to the School Link web site to enable ease of maintenance and a consistent platform.

The drivers for replacing the current site included the ability to enhance the user buying experience with a more personalised service. School Link was also keen for the new solution to have more user-friendly, intuitive tools to allow front-end changes to be made quickly and easily.

The Solution
A dynamic new School Link site offering over a hundred books to choose from at greatly discounted prices.

The site encompasses features such as Teacher's Choice providing a special selection of titles chosen for their suitability for classrooms and school libraries.

An area of the site is called The Staff Room and is dedicated to the latest news from School Link, various school events; fun downloads for the classroom, message board chat and competitions.

Parents can also order on the School Link website and donate the 10% earned online directly to their school account. The site also features a 'School of the Month' online, which means that anyone can order from School Link and if they don't have children in a school registered for the School Link Scheme, they can choose to donate their discount to the featured school.

You can write reviews on the School Link site and also look inside the books with both text extracts and inside images of many of the books on the website.

Another feature of the site is 'I saw this and thought of you', which gives visitors the ability to email details of a book to a friend.