Mazda Hong Kong Website
Background
Mazda Hong Kong was experiencing a change of dealership to a new company in Hong Kong.
The major audiences of Mazda in the Hong Kong market are young users including loyal supporters. Mazda was looking for a new business operation and marketing angle, they wanted to revamp the website with new energy in order to recapture the market share in the industry, also targeted to increase the popularity against the other competitors through max use of digital networks, social networking and different digital platforms etc.
Needs
During the development process, the existing website was reviewed as an old, outdated platform without sufficient information and imagery for users. Based on the comments and feedbacks from the users and supporters, they were disappointed by the current website. It needed to be revamped desperately from an old fashioned looking website into a stylish, more energetic and trendy looking website that can lead the current market trends and cater the needs.
What we do
In order to understand the expectation and needs from the users, several stages of users experience reviewing, testing and focus group discussion were conducted. The website design direction and development were based on the research findings, such as the use of imagery and content updates. Access to the website from different digital platform such as tablet users, a vertical scrolling website layout was introduced to give a more friendly and tablet device compatible experience to users.
The integration of contents and resource files from old to new system and providing CMS system to staff for content management were also proved to big challenges. The project was completed in 4 months for phase 1, whereas phase 2 was as scheduled to provide mobile and tablet version in a month afterward.
In terms of design, a trendy young energetic look for the layout was introduced. The design was trying to highlight features and style of each cars and make it appealing to users, also can differentiate each cars with their own unique characteristics. HTML 5 concept was used as the foundation for website development instead of old fashioned Flash. It was a challenge to create all the dynamic movement without any usage of Flash. For the 2D design, we introduced multi –layered animation to make the website with more “movement”.
Challenges
To pursue with this new design development transitions, the existing programming needed to be changed. The initial platform was PHP Java based server and it was outdated, so a new server system was proposed to pursue with the new performance. It was a challenge to make such a big move in the project, even though the changes of server caused extra effort, we still manage to launch in time and by phases.
End result
The website was designed based on clients convenience to manage, as the CMS was tailored to maximize the usage and bring convenience to the back-end users for content update. There also were membership and system settings, which aligns with vehicle service provided by our clients. These ideas were collaboration between the customers, sales team and on top with creative ideas.
The whole project lasted for 6 months, apart from the website revamping and redesign, advance membership concept tool was in development process for the CRM use.
Social networking was also one of the important communication channels between client and users. Through the use of the Facebook page, customers and non-customers can access with the latest news and update of the brand, apart from regular channel.
Young users can directly communicate to Mazda HK through Facebook and receive a full support if they have any enquiries. This helps to align the brand with the new generation customers who relay on digital platform as part of their daily tools.
