Digital Publishing framework and e-Commerce website for York Notes Study Guides

Balberry Publishing and Pearson wanted to launch a dedicated digital channel to sell and publish the York Notes study guide series across web, mobile and ebook platforms.

The project demanded more than a 'straighforward' e-commerce solution. Not only did we have to promote and sell a huge range of guides, integrating with Pearson's payment and stock gateway, we also had to publish all the content of the guides and manage subscriptions across a variety of platforms incuding the website, iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle and ePub.

The design brief was to provide a seamless experience for the user moving from print, to web to app and beyond, we were also tasked to enhance the digital content with rich media learning tools.

Using HTML 5 and a sophisticated CMS we enabled York Notes to take control of their content and publish to multiple platforms.

The finished product was a stylish, user focused evolution of the print guide styles. Technically the system we delivered gives York Notes total flexibility and control of the Study Guide Content and the ability to create and amend study guide content via the CMS. They can also generate .mobi/kf8 files for delivery to Kindle and ePub files for Nook, Kobo and iBooks. The same XML and HTML5 is also used to generate iOS and Android Apps for each title.

Together we also worked on developing a fantastic suite of Revision Tools including an Essay Wizard, Key Quotations test, Video Tutorials and Sample Answer content. We also enabled students to take and save notes on a page-by-page basis.

We continue to work with York Notes on further initiatives across Development, Digital Marketing and Content Development as we work to constantly evolve the site.