Siddons Martin
Challenges
Siddon Martin’s previous website revolved around only one segment of emergency vehicles: fire trucks. The company has an entire portfolio of emergency vehicles consisting of airport, EMS, wildland, and EVS solutions yet when users browsed it only appeared to only sell fire solutions. This was an opportunity lost. Customers prefer to find everything that is offered and make their decisions from within that selection. From the user perspective, this information should be accessed as quickly and intuitively as possible.
Client Goals
Strengthen Brand Preception
Develop a Consistent Experience
Becoming More Client-Centric
Developing In-Production Live View
360° Product Experience
360° Dealership Experience
Increase Web Engagement
Outperform Competitors
Instill a Sense of Pride
Customers
New customers had difficulty finding the corresponding regional offices and their points of contact to service their inquiries. The contact list did not explicitly provide this information and it sent customers on a more often than not the unsuccessful journey. Furthermore, the navigational features of the previous site were lackluster and trial some for some users. Existing customers were interested in knowing the status of their purchases and where those vehicles were in the assembly line, a request, and service that could not be satisfied with the functionality of the previous website.
Insights
We planned interviews and observed live client browsing behaviors. We found that over 70% of users were not able to find points of contact for the specific products/services they were searching for. Additionally, finding the status of an existing order was a struggle.
Strategies
Our strategy was to streamline the navigational journey to help users find contact information. We created smart contact forms to match the prospective buyer to the correct department in two clicks. We reviewed the user experience of potential clients to capture the buying experience and found it was difficult to submit inquiries and see all available products/services. To address the limited product presentation, we proposed a design that would showcase and organize all product offerings at a glance upon visiting the Homepage.
The Concept
OWDT realized that the best solution to Siddon Martin’s challenges was to create a real-time in-production module to show the manufacturing status of customer vehicles. This could eliminate the back-and-forth communication and any preventable errors in manufacturing. This allowed customers to monitor the progress and step-in if the product was not being built to spec or if there were any issues in development. This solution had the potential to spare Siddons Martin from unnecessary manufacturing losses and would help keep customers satisfied.
The Big aha moment
We believed the residual benefit was the strong appeal to prospective customers who could see their future purchases take place in a transparent and collaborative lens. This all amounted to an opportunity to increase sales.
Tactics & Execution
The best way to materialize the solution we proposed was for us to consider showcasing a collection of photos taken by the production line manager for each vehicle in each stage of its assembly process. Production managers would upload the images to the server using their devices. The website would automatically organize the images into their final destinations of the production timeline. The images would be time-stamped and organized for display, ease of discovery, and user optimization. This served two purposes, one as a real-time view of the vehicle’s current stage of production, and secondly as a way to audit materials and parts by entering an order number or vehicle name into the in-production search box. The end goals were to increase customer satisfaction through quality assurance and for Siddons Martin to reduce errors and manufacturing costs.
Results
The end results were spectacular. The development of a new design, navigational experience, and in-production module helped Siddons Martin increase sales on all available products. As we widened the scope of offerings presented to the customer, Siddons was able to increase interest in their other segments that customers did not originally visit the site for.
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