Driving the Penfold Experience on-line

The client:
Penfold Motors is a well-established Melbourne car retailer with multiple dealership, multiple sites and several sales and service offerings. Established more than 40 years ago, the business has an enviable reputation for high volume sales and excellence in service delivery.

The trigger:
A recent enterprise-wide brand re-fresh delivered a rejuvenated visual identity with a creative based on the central differentiator, the “Penfold Experience”. The brand essence had been captured and communicated in print and signage. It was time to align Penfold’s on-line presence.

The journey:
Penfold presented the DDG development team with a well-considered brief for their new website. The theme (the Penfold Experience) had already been identified during the re-brand exercise. To this they added a list of must-haves (including some third party products and links) and a wish-list of functionality and communication elements. The aim was to create a website unlike any other in the car retailing industry. It had to be editable. It had to have broad appeal. And it had to have depth.

There were several websites sitting underneath the “hero” site, and none of these were aligned in terms of visual or information architecture. The main site would act as a gateway, directing traffic to the various dealer and service websites.

DDG and the Penfold team collaborated in an extensive requirements gathering exercise to flesh-out the brief and identify the many elements that would combine to make this website another success story for Penfold.

The solution:
DDG delivered a solution which combines high-calibre brand-building principles, aesthetic appeal, visitor engagement, user-focus and client edit-ability. A complicated multi-site proposition with information galore has been simplified using a layered information architecture and a multi-access navigation system.

The home page features the Penfold Experience story narrated via flash animation, key brand messages and high-quality images. This page provides triple-entry easy-access to the other dealer and maker-specific sites via either the traditional horizontal navigation bar, the vertically arranged series of icon “calls to action” (such as Book a Test Drive or Find a used Car) or photographic images of the various “maker” badges. This framework enables the visitor to search according to their own priorities and needs – whether they seek a particular make of vehicle, a particular dealer, a particular service or a leisurely browse of the site. No matter what brought them to the site, each visitor will find high volumes of information organised in a very searchable and trafficable format.

Central to the solution is the high level of edit-ability. All the dealer sites are integrated under a single Content Management System (CMS) that ensures the content can be readily updated (by Penfold themselves) so it remains current and accurate. The various sites are now visually aligned, to reinforce the “parent” Penfold brand and convey a sense of unity and strength.
Other featured elements include:

Owners’ Centre – enables visitors’ on-line capacity to book a vehicle service, check their service history or monitor progress on a service

Finance information - links directly to Penfold’s finance provider, GMAC Finance, for exploration of finance options, budget planning and payment calculator

Manufacturer links – pulls extensive information through from linked sites, ensuring vehicle data is always comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date

iTalk Connect – an integrated third party module which generates an instant telephone call-back from the Penfold team

Google maps – integrated maps showing dealer locations and access to easy directions.

DDG’s General Manager, Jim Thompson, explains, “This website cleverly merges many sub-sites into one integrated access point that provides effortless navigation on many levels. Visitors will come to this space for very diverse reasons, so our objective was to create a site that would not only provide ready access to their targets but also engage them more broadly in the Penfold Experience, which is the essence of the brand.”

The benefits include:

• Superior brand communication – alignment of messages … visually, textually and functionally 
• Excellent customer engagement via easy-access content pathways, integration of interesting third party add-ons and multi-linking from various sites 
• Edit-ability – an overarching Content Management System that provides flexibility and independence 
• Relationship management – encourages consumer uptake of parallel propositions through cross-linking them beneath the umbrella of the Penfold Experience.
• Versatility and longevity – the capacity to add or remove functionality in the future, meaning the site enjoys a longer, high-quality life and continues to return on the investment Penfold have made in it 
• Internal culture building – provides a cohesive and unified identity that helps focus Penfold team members on brand values, cross-selling opportunities and enterprise-wide objectives.

The results so far:
Penfold’s Managing Director, Barry Williams, reports that since its launch in May, the website is attracting some serious traffic and some favourable comment from within the industry. “We have actually been surprised by the high levels of visitation,” he explains. “The corporate umbrella site is getting around 4,000 visitors a month, the Penfold Holden site around 8,000 a month and the Penfold Mazda site up to 6,000 a month.”

Barry and the Penfold team are delighted with the result and very satisfied with the way the development process panned out. Barry says, “This website was an extension of our earlier brand re-fresh so we had some of the groundwork done, but we were really intent on getting it right, of creating something with longevity. We committed to working with DDG throughout the structured 6-8 month development phase, ensuring quality written and visual content. It wasn’t about rushing; it was about getting it right and eventually we were able to roll out the four websites over a 6 week period.”

“The new website cuts through the clutter that characterises many of our industry’s websites. It is graphically clean and crisp and has sensible navigation that works to deliver the content. It certainly meets our aim to have the various sites share some commonality whilst retaining their individual personalities. We look forward to adding more content and functionality in the future. We know that strategy is the glue that makes it all work, so we will be working with DDG to develop a promotional strategy to drive even more traffic to our new on-line showcase.”

To visit the new Penfold website click here.