The Challenge

In 2021 the company relaunched its website, and as they were happy with their existing design, we kept most of the look and feel. However, the old website was not easy for content managers to edit, as most pages were hardcoded with page templates, which more often than not required a developer to update pages.

The client wanted to create a subscription revenue stream from their extensive ebook content. And, whilst schools and individual students wanted access to The Answer Series’ ebook content, the displaying of ebooks that are meant for print is challenging. 

The Solution

By introducing WooCommerce and Sensei Pro, and adding WooCommerce Subscriptions, we were able to build subscription products for learners and teachers. This enabled students to subscribe to the relevant package and get access to all The Answer Series ebooks for one price. 

To serve the ebook content, we developed a custom Snapplify API integration with WooCommerce Subscriptions. There was no API documentation available for Snapplify, which meant our lead developer needed to work closely with the Snapplify Team to help them test their “Subscription” API. This API allows users to register a list of books as a ‘subscription’ product (in Snapplify), and then purchase access to that subscription via the client website.

Payment is accepted via the WooCommerce Payment gateways and on completion of the order, a request is sent to Snapplify to enable the subscription. We did some back office API integration as well, allowing users to cancel or pause subscriptions as desired.

The length of the subscription is completely controlled via WooCommerce, allowing the third party website to determine the subscription length. 

The outcome of our solution was that the client was able to streamline their system by using more inbuilt functionality instead of an overly hard-coded website. This freed them from having to involve a developer for the slightest changes on their site, whilst making it simple and easy for users to subscribe and use the ebook resources provided.