Designing an Effective Website
I had the pleasure of working with the Custom Carts team on refreshing their branding and re-design of their website. Before the Initial Project Conference at our office, I toured their facility to get a feel for their personality and approach. As a designer, I was especially interested to learn about the design and fabrication process for their custom golf carts.
I was genuinely impressed with their operation, and it became clear from the moment I walked into their showroom that their old website was doing their company a great disservice. The former website was developed in FrontPage, looked outdated and was extremely difficult to navigate. As I spoke with the owner Louie Hasbrouck and his Sales Manager Tim Cavanaugh, I immediately understood the strong sense of pride that goes into their work and the comraderie between staff.
The catalyst for the project however was to help promote the launch of their new product line, the All-American Series. This is a new line of “green” Low Speed Vehicles that require no gas to operate. These vehicles can utilize up to 50% of recycled or certified remanufactured parts and materials, and is covered by a new vehicle warranty. They even have optional solar tops for optimal energy efficiency. Custom Carts knew they needed to have a highly professional website so when they begin promoting this new line of golf carts, the website will help sell them as the highly skilled professionals they are.
Once I familiarized myself with their products and process we discussed their new website design. Because they are a creative, cutting edge company in their industry, we wanted to implement a much more contemporary design for the new website. We incorporated bright, vibrant colors to make it visually stimulating, whereas the old website primarily used black throughout. The old website also had long, run-on pages because their photos ran serially down the page. This caused long page load times and was not very friendly for website visitors. So we integrated a photo slideshow software that allows the staff of Custom Carts to keep it up to date when they finish a new project. Because they had a fair amount of content, we used Spry to show/hide content to help consolidate their information and make the website more user-friendly.
When we launched the website, Tim said, “At the beginning I wasn’t sure how things were going to turn out. But now that we’re done, I can’t imagine our website looking any other way.”
Take a look at the new Custom Carts website and see what they have to offer. You just might find the golf cart of your dreams. Eat your heart out, Tiger Woods!
