Background
Car Throttle create, distribute & sell to auto enthusiasts - working for major brands like Nissan, Shell, McLaren and Mercedes-Benz.
After starting life as a car blog in 2009, they quickly evolved into a popular site covering car news, reviews, humour and video content. Extremely active on social media, they had popular pages on Facebook, a thriving YouTube channel and a growing fanbase.
Problem
The Car Throttle business offering had changed over the past 3 years, when I originally designed the .com homepage. Back then they were an editorial and community platform for users. Today, they are a social agency - creating, distributing & selling to auto enthusiasts.
They wanted to show existing and new clients their best work - case studies and organic content - as well as showing them the agency services they offered in a more professional funnel to capture leads and convert them into new accounts.
Goal
Increase the number of new clients and inbound accounts
As Car Throttle narrowed down the company's focus (social agency - create, distribute & sell to auto enthusiasts) it's important they communicated that to the world. If they had a clearer and more concise vision, new clients would be able to better understand what they do
Solution
Car Throttle knew they wanted a new homepage to reflect the new business offering. The current homepage was designed as a social community platform for car enthusiasts- but it now needed to evolve into a showcase of their best content for a new type of user - media agencies and marketing executives.
Also, the Car Throttle branding didn't fit with this new business offering. The original Car Throttle branding was designed to be friendly, playful and decorative. But it was flat and not considered for video and social content. We needed a new brand that was more professional, modern and recognisable whilst still keeping its iconic personality.
We decided to evolve the brand and design a new home page and complementary pages, such as about, advertise and case studies.
Final Car Throttle logo
Competitors map
Using competitor maps we got a better view on the different types of competitors, direct and indirect. It gave us clarity and inspiration.
This was a useful exercise as we discovered on top of the direct automotive creative agency competitors, there were a lot of non-auto specific agencies able to create content - but not able to offer distribution or commerce services.
User persona
Branding
Logo
Exploring Car Throttle icons
Colour Palette
Typography
Final logo
Website
We decided the new website design had to:
- Show quality of the brand and their work
- Show off their client roster
- Show off their best organic content (video, written and vertical)
- Show off recent press
- Show off their brands (Car Throttle and WTF1) on the CT.com homepage
- Think about a new navigation
- Think about any other subpages that need redesigning (Advertise, About, Contact, etc)
- Show off their client roster
- Show off their best organic content (video, written and vertical)
- Show off recent press
- Show off their brands (Car Throttle and WTF1) on the CT.com homepage
- Think about a new navigation
- Think about any other subpages that need redesigning (Advertise, About, Contact, etc)
Wireframes
Information Architecture / content hierarchy
Homepage - mobile
Homepage - desktop
Visual design
Home page
Case study page
About page
Advertise page
