Website Development for Perth Equipment Supplier Brooks Hire

Established in 1979 by Doug Brooks, Brooks Hire has a rich history and transitioned into a leading WA equipment and machinery hire company. Even while experiencing rapid growth they've continued to remain true to their core values as a family business and wanted to reflect this through their website user experience.

280%

increase in pageviews on the new website^_*

“From day one it was clear that Integranet have extensive expertise and an honest no-nonsense approach to building our website. The team were able to anticipate our needs according to initial discussions and make appropriate recommendations.

They were highly responsive throughout the build and after launch they have continued to provide excellent technical support and advice whenever we’ve needed them. They made the whole process seamless and took the lead in helping us get a well-built website without the headaches, we would highly recommend them.”

_{- Stuart Brooks Managing Director, Brooks Hite}

The Challenge

Having already faced challenges working with other Perth website development agencies, Brooks Hire selected us as their digital partner to ensure they had on the ground support by local website developers, marketing specialists and solution architects.

We picked up our digital shovels and took on the project. Brooks Hire was stuck with an old website on Kentico Version 8, as such the new website needed to be completely rebuilt on Kentico Version 12 to allow the team access to the latest features and functionality in line with market trends.

To bring the website look and feel up to date our web developers recommended a new information architecture (IA) in a way that helped the average joe navigate the site, find the products they need and quickly submit a request for a quote. User experience (UX) was at the core of the solution, enabling busy customers to quickly and easily get the service they needed before picking up the phone.

The Solution

To overcome previous challenges faced and bring the new platform inline with current and future expectations we decided to use an eCommerce concept and functionality as the foundation of the website. Using Kentico as the CMS kept costs low and also made it easy for the Brooks Hire team to manage the site and products themselves on a daily basis.
 

We imported over 1000 products saving hours of pain.

Brooks Hire have amassed an extensive amount of equipment, some with components that could be individually selected and hired on their own. All of these products needed to be added to the new site, along with their product specific data and metadata. Saving the client and content editors weeks of manual copying, we imported over 1000 products and relating data for them.
 

A new dynamic filtering system that doesn’t refresh the whole page.

Typically a supplier in the product hire and equipment industry have websites that allow users to search for specific items based on category. With Brooks Hire, they wanted to take this experience one step further. We built the search filtering system in a way that a customer can locate a product based on category, for example Excavators or Dump Trucks, then they could also continue to filter based on brand, and features such as weight. Each time the filter is updated, new data is refreshed without requiring a full-page refresh.
 

Order a product without actually selecting a product.

Due to the busy nature of their customers and the need for a quick and easy ordering process, the product search and filtering hierarchy was combined with an add to cart (or quote request function).

Customers could choose a specific product based on make and model, but if unsure they can simply request a quote based on equipment class and category alone, without narrowing down further. For example, if a customer was simply looking for a “14T Excavator” but didn’t have any specific requirements (such as Make or Model), they could simply add this item to a quote.

The Brooks Hire service team can then follow up and quickly recommend the best  product for the customer and update the quote accordingly. This lowered the risk of a frustrated user experience and lost website visitors who were too busy to locate the exact product needed.

The Result

We offered Brooks Hire pain free support in the creation of their new website. Our support was honest and local, at times sitting next to the client during development to ensure they were happy with what we were creating (we can do that because we don’t outsource). Most importantly the website displays powerful features designed to help drive more customers and enquiries for the business. User experience is thought out and tailored to how Brooks Hire operates.

Most importantly products can continue to be added and edited by Brooks Hire content administrators, allowing them full independence and growing the site as they do.

Developed locally in Perth, our web developers included all the nuts and bolts you’d expect with a high quality website to support Brooks Hire’s future goals and aspirations. If you also have a vision like them to transform your customer's digital experience - book a free consultation with our techsplorers today.