04 / MMDriving
Client work, live
Research, web design and build

A site that turns a nervous learner into a booked lesson.

A driving instructor's website, redesigned as a set of British road signs so a nervous learner can find their way to a booked first lesson.

100Lighthouse for performance, accessibility and SEO on a phone, up from 78 and 91
6towns, on one roundabout sign
0backend for the client to pay for

The MMDriving home page: a green road sign reading Calm driving lessons in Loughborough, with an L plate and a Book a first lesson button

Built with React, TypeScript, Vite, CSS Modules, Public Sans and Formspree. Try it live (new tab)

Live since October 2026. Pass rates and reviews go on the site once the instructor confirms them, not before.

The brief

A site a nervous learner, or their parent, would trust.

An instructor covering six East Midlands towns needed a site that turns a visit into a booked first lesson. My first version did the job, but when I reviewed it against lists of common template patterns it matched fourteen of them, and on a phone it scored 78 for performance and 91 for accessibility.

So I started again from research: 17 driving-school sites and 11 others measured, how learners actually choose an instructor, and what stops people sending an enquiry.

The idea

Every learner already knows how to read a road sign.

The whole site is built from the British road sign system. One typeface, and colour with one job each: green is the main surface, yellow is only ever something you can press, blue is information, and red is kept for the L plate and errors.

The client asked for no photo, so trust comes from what can be checked instead: "Check me before you book" explains the green badge every approved instructor has to show.

The instructor section: No pressure. No shouting. beside a short introduction and five points about what a lesson is like — Who is teaching me, and what a lesson is like, answered first.

A white stack sign listing six kinds of lesson in three groups, each with an Ask about this link — Six kinds of lesson set out like a stack sign: one destination per row.

Key decisions

Pick a lane, and the form already knows.

The three ways to pay are a motorway gantry, one lane each, with yellow used only for the recommended lane. Choosing a lane, or a kind of lesson, carries that choice down into the enquiry form, so nobody has to say it twice.

The six towns are the exits of a roundabout sign, each named, for local search and for a parent scanning for their own town.

Choosing a lane fills in the form, then a name, a number, and sent.

Three ways to pay as a blue motorway gantry, with the 10-hour block marked best value and the only yellow button — Three ways to pay, one lane each, with one clear recommendation.

A green roundabout sign whose exits are the six towns, beside a list of the same towns — Six towns as the exits of one roundabout.

Nothing on the page should make a nervous learner do extra work.

Answer the worries first

The whole road to passing, before they pick up the phone.

A dark road runs from provisional licence to passed in five stops. Yellow stops are the ones with the instructor; the rest link straight to GOV.UK, so a learner can see what is theirs to do.

The questions people ask most sit underneath, including one written for parents booking for their son or daughter.

The road from provisional licence to passed: five numbered stops on a dark road, marked With me or Yours to do — Five stops, and which ones are with the instructor.

Before you ask: seven common questions as an accordion, the first one open — The questions learners and parents ask most, answered first.

Booking

A form that never loses what someone typed.

Countdown markers, like the ones before a motorway exit, say what happens after you press send. The form has every state: mistakes explained in plain words, sending, sent, failed, offline, and a draft that survives a refresh.

WhatsApp sits beside the form as an equal way in, because plenty of learners would rather message than fill in fields.

Book a first lesson: three countdown markers beside a short enquiry form with a yellow Send my enquiry button — Three steps from send to a first lesson, and a form with nothing spare.

A real constraint

There was no budget for a backend, so there is no backend.

The site is fully static and the enquiry form runs through a form service. That one constraint shaped everything downstream: no accounts, no personalisation, nothing that assumes infrastructure the client isn't paying for.

Signs are put up as you scroll, painted on rather than faded in, and the whole page is checked by 83 automated tests covering the form, layout, tap sizes and every screen width before anything goes live.