Umbraco
Case Study

Tenpin

E-commerce and Reservations Website for major bowling chain

Mentor Digital was commissioned to create a modern, mobile-friendly e-commerce and reservations website for Tenpin. The site has many advanced features, including scheduled banners, changing the offers based on the time of the day and time of the week, and a school holiday scheduling system allowing special deals to be advertised at key times. Umbraco CMS was the obvious choice for the Tenpin website as it gives us the flexibility we needed to create an easy-to-browse website and also create an excellent experience for content editors to manage a lot of advanced content around 47 different retail locations. During the build, Mentor Digital redesigned the site to implement new branding and to modernize the look and feel across desktop and mobile devices. We carried out user testing and eye tracking to ensure an easy user journey and guarantee high conversion rates of site visitors into paying customers.

About Tenpin

Tenpin is one of the UK's largest retail bowling chains, running 46 centers across the UK. Mentor Digital has been working in partnership with Tenpin for over 9 years, and Tenpin has recently retained Mentor to create their new bowling and leisure activities reservations site for 2020.

What had to be done

The older website built in 2011 had a separate mobile website, with only limited functionality for mobile users. This project needed to massively improve the experience for mobile users. Also, the previous website only allowed customers to book bowling, whereas Tenpin offers a whole range of activities that Mentor was tasked with making bookable through the new website, including laser tag, karaoke, and soft play. The new website was commissioned to make use of wider screens, more advanced mobile browsers, and more modern interface techniques and to create a modern reservations experience.

How Mentor Digital made it happen

Mentor developed Tenpin's new website, Umbraco CMS, and state-of-the-art booking engine software, and our technical team worked with Tenpin's bowling lane management software providers to develop an API system to communicate between the pin setting and lane booking systems and the website Mentor Digital provided: - Web development and design - Open source Umbraco CMS build and integration - Advanced tracking integrations - Booking engine build - Software integration and API - UX and user testing - Technical project management - Ongoing website management and updates. 

The stunning results ✨

The site has been launched for a few weeks, and more detailed YOY comparison statistics are not yet available, but the site is performing well and is ranking number 1 immediately on Google for many competitive search terms e.g., 'Bristol Bowling' the site immediately went to number one ensuring we maintained a position above Hollywood bowl at the top spot on Google. Protecting search engine rankings was one of our highest priorities during this build.