HPE Motorsport Website Launch
Back in April 2017 we met James and Jeff Harris whilst covering the All Ford Show at Aylesford Priory, they purchased a mug and a print each so we decided when the mugs were ready to hand deliver to them as they were just down the road; plus who wouldn’t want to pop in to HPE Motorsport?!
They loved the quality of the mugs so we set about designing and printing some merchandise mugs for them. This was just the start of our relationship, having being a company that has a passion for and specialises in the automotive sector this sounded like the perfect partnership.
For those of you who do not know Harris Performance they have been around since the 1930’s, started by Ron Harris “The Conrod Father” modifying motorbikes before moving onto upgrading Ford Engines.
Jeff Harris; his son later took over the company to create his “Nuff Said” legacy and now close to retirement his son James Harris has taken over, you can read more about this on their website. HPE Motorsport are the leaders in the industry for modified Classic Ford engines including the Pinto, Xflow and Cosworth. When visiting their website it wasn’t what we were expecting and looked like it hadn’t had an engine upgrade itself since the 90’s (but we did enjoy the childhood pics of James).
Putting our heads together we found two main problems that needed resolving for James to bring HPE Motorsport ready to start his legacy. The first was that too much of his time was being taken up by writing engine quotes for clients that didn’t have the budget to match what they wanted to achieve, to get around this we came up with a simple Engine Builder so that within 3 easy steps someone can get an idea of the budget they need and initiate an engine build.
The second problem we discovered was that HPE sell parts and spares; which people are unaware of, so having an online shop will really help boost sales. James had been working hard developing products unique to Harris Performance and needed an outlet to sell these as until now he has only sold them over the Facebook group. As Jeff reaches retirement he is finding it hard to build engines due to his wearing joints, so the addition of the new shop front and online shop provide him with the perfect work opportunity to go forward with.
The photography on the site needed to be bespoke and to the highest quality possible, so we asked commercial photographer Darren Woolway to step in. The first challenge given was to photograph a Race Clutch, he was asked to photograph the plates separately so that consumers could see what they were buying. James expected a set of plates laid out on a table but instead our photographer produced this:
It’s so perfect many people questioned if in fact it was CGI. The photography for the website was well planned, we worked out what imagery we needed for which sections and then went and photographed the shot we needed for the space it needed to fill. This Race Clutch set the bar for the quality of the imagery needed to carry out the Harris Performance brand and would be our new quality benchmark. Here are a few of the product shots:
Great timing is essential when launching a new website, but this is greatly affected by how busy a client is to create the written content needed to complete the site. To set a clear timeline we suggested to James that we launch the website on New Years Day, we would even place a countdown timer on the front page of the website so he can see how long or not he has to complete the content #nopressure
Now that the time had been set we added a sign up link to the homepage so fans could sign up to be updated on the progress. The launch went perfectly with the first order being placed on the site at 1:20am, only 20 minutes after the site was opened! It has already had interest from fans as far as Germany and Australia, which will be the next development plan… to set the weight based shipping for international orders.
For those who haven’t seen or cannot remember what the old site looked like we have a screenshot of Before and After for you here:
I hope that you have enjoyed reading a bit about what was involved with this project. Make sure you check out the new site at www.hpemotorsport.co.uk Leave comments below, share the article and get in touch with us to discuss your project.