Trail Learning

// what it is

My own business: one-to-one maths and computer science tutoring, plus a part-time coding bootcamp. Everything on it is mine to stand behind, which changes how you write it.

// the problem

Tutoring sites tend to oversell — stock photos of other people's students, a testimonial wall, a claimed pass rate. I had no student results to publish yet, so the site had to be persuasive while making no claim I could not back.

// decisions

1. 01

   No borrowed credibility

   No stock classroom photography, no invented testimonials, no statistics. The hero is a hand-coded SVG graphic instead of a photo of someone else's tuition. What is left to persuade with is the actual offer, clearly explained.

2. 02

   Enquiry over instant booking

   Tutoring starts with a conversation about a specific student, not a checkout. The form collects what I need to reply usefully — subject, level, what they are stuck on — instead of taking a payment for a slot that might not fit.

3. 03

   Email that fails quietly rather than loudly

   Enquiries go out through Resend, and the handler no-ops cleanly when no API key is configured rather than throwing. A missing environment variable in a side project should not turn into a 500 in front of a parent.