Digital
The Challenge
Kenworth Truck Company’s corporate marketing strategy as well as the consumer’s perspectives are constantly evolving, driven by how technology continues to shape our lives and communications. The previous website was designed to support a dealer-centric model in which Kenworth designed and built trucks and technologies but gave their dealer network the primary role in communicating with customers. While dealers still have an essential part to play in truck sales, the shifting strategy positions Kenworth as an active voice in customer communications. Rather than being gated behind a dealer conversation, customers are given the opportunity to start their own research before entering a showroom via Kenworth.com. This enables dealers to have more productive conversations about customization and finding the right truck to fit their needs.
The Solution
The redesign and modernization of Kenworth.com reflects the company’s current brand and product positioning. It blends modern design aesthetics and functionality into a brand-worthy presence with rich content. It takes a complicated subject and leverages intuitive information design to show the benefits of each Kenworth truck model.
The newest truck model, the T680 Next Gen, is built upon the successful and popular T680 model. Its launch on the new Kenworth.com platform introduced best-in-class safety, aerodynamics, and technology features. Innovations integrated into the vehicle design needed to be highlighted on the website, balanced with all the associated details.
The previous dealer-centric strategy found PDFs and videos with detailed information often buried in website resources. The updated design brings new prominence to content, featuring all aspects of the truck in a single page divided into modular panels as a “digital brochure.” This allows for easier consideration between truck models across multiple pages.
This type of intuitive design does not only apply to what the public sees but is also applied to the design of the Umbraco content management system (CMS) as well. The content panels are comprised of modular content elements that can be applied to different truck models. This allows for easy editing through a single back-end instance in the CMS.
Rigorous IT security standards are dictated by PACCAR, Inc., Kenworth’s parent company. Part of the modernization of the website included continued adherence to those security standards and updating the site build to be on the most current implementation of Umbraco CMS, a tool that the Kenworth team has successfully been using for the past 10+ years.
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