The Model Driving School

Can a driving school be an online only business?

Bright Red L Website with online booking

Being the developer of the UK's most advanced online diary for driving schools and instructors, the Driving Instructor's Diary, building a model driving school trading online seemed like a challenge worth pursuing. 

Bright Red L is the driving school I started with my wife, Sue, in 2002. We were quick to adopt internet marketing and added simple online booking 4 years ago. This was the seed that started Instructor Apps and led to development of the Driving Instructor's Diary.

Just like a lot of businesses Bright Red L has taken a bashing due to the recession and my own attention has been focused on starting and building Instructor Apps. So we decided now is the time to wash and brush up Bright Red L and launch it to the world in it's shiny new clothes. This has involved creating a new website and blog and making these work along with or successful Facebook Page.

The plan is to make Bright Red L a model driving school to show how Instructor Apps Driving Instructor's Diary can be used to run a driving school with online driving lesson booking. We are concentrating on Portsmouth and will be recruiting some new Instructors. The intention is to keep teaching standards high and charge a rate that keeps Instructors earnings above the area's average. 

With Driving Instructor's Diary we can take card payments for lessons online through PayPal and payments can go direct to the instructors PayPal accounts cutting down administration and costs. Accounting headaches also disappear because the instructors income never looks like it could be part of the school income with the associated tax implications.

When everything is in place we then have to be brave and remove the phone number from the website and other marketing. All lesson booking will take place online from then onwards. This isn't so scary as we have had online booking for over 4 years and it has produced a majority of our bookings. We will, inevitably, miss out on the pupils who only want to phone. However, the extra revenue generated would only be taken up with cost of keeping the phones answered.

Follow my Blog for further updates as we create a model online driving school, it's going to be an interesting time.

A New Widget Design for Dorian

Adding online booking to your website is easy with the Driving Instructor's Diary, you simply paste the HTML code for a Post Code Search Widget supplied in your login into your website. Whilst we have some nice designs what do you do if the designs don't match your website?

A Custom Widget

For a custom Widget just let us know what you would like and where you would like it to fit on your website. We will make a widget in your choice of colour, size and style and send you the HTML to paste into your website. Then we will add the Widget to the Widget Library for other Driving Instructor's Diary users to use.

Dorian asked us for a Widget to fit into his website which you can see top right of the screenshot. We matched the colours and made the widget a fixed width so it blends in seamlessly. Thank you for your comments in this email Dorian.

"Hi Colin,

Just wanted to let you know the widget code you sent work well and looks good.

I just want to thank you again for all your help much appreciated.

Regards 

Dorian"

Received 4th April 2013.

Thanks From Paul

Thank you for these comments Paul posted on 13th March 2013 in the I'm an Instructor and I've got an iPad Facebook Group.

"Colin's app is really worth the investment I can't recall having a cancellation since using it, and Colin is a very nice professional person to work along side, any thing or nothing is any trouble and the response to any problems you have is lightening fast, if you don't use the app I'd strongly recommend trying it.  Thanks again Colin keep up the good work.  Thanks Passmaster Paul"

You can find Paul's website at passmaster.net. Notice the search widget for Paul's Driving Instructor's Diary so pupils can search for lessons using their post code.

Thanks from Dave

Thanks for the feedback Dave.

"Thanks Colin,

I do appreciate your prompt response, and i don't know what i would now do without this calendar.... It really works for me...

Dave"

Sent by e-mail on 6th September 2012.

Heres a screenshot of Dave's website. Out of shot is a post code search widget for online booking using Driving Instructor's Diary.