Johnson Crane Hire
Case Study
Client: Johnson Crane Hire (JCH), a South African crane hire company
Brief: upgrade & improve the website
Challenges along the way:
• client had limited budget
• target market is not all that tech-savvy
• there was a lot of information that needed to be displayed on each page, which given the target audience and information display norms, is not ideal as too much information could seem overwhelming to a user. The challenge was thus to find a solution to present all the necessary information in an easy to ‘digest’ manner that made the information seem less.
The Solution:
Create a tree-like diagram with each branch representing an information point.
If an information point contains too much information then it becomes expandable & where possible, information is displayed in diagrams / tables.
• previously, Johnson Crane Hire had multiple websites in an attempt to accommodate their multi-division company structure, and still some of the divisions did not have any online presence… JCH has multiple divisions within the overarching JCH company and each of these divisions essentially operate as individual and competing companies. Thus the challenge was to create sufficient presence for each division on a single website, without cluttering the website and still having the website design feel simple, not information heavy and and user friendly or easy to use for the target audience.
The Solution:
Have 2 main "nav bars." The general one on the left and one for the divisions displayed at the top of the screen. This way many different pages and divisions can be displayed without relying on complex menu tabs, but rather makes use of clear, simple buttons.
The divisions' nav makes use of icons to explain which button represents which division and in order to reduce number of clicks, the divisions nav bar becomes an enlarged feature on the home screen for quick and easy navigation.
• the “Contact Us” and "Operating Areas" pages were another challenge, as this company has such an overwhelming amount of contact details that are “absolutely necessary and important” to display. If all the details had to be displayed, the user would not only feel intimidated by the page, but would also have to scroll down for a life time to find the desired contact details, which might even be overlooked given the large number of telephone numbers, emails and operating areas displayed on these pages.
The Solution:
Divide all the information into categories or sections. Then have only the HQ contact details visible at the top of the page, while the rest of the sections are collapsed. Each section has an expand/collapse button. This allows the user to quickly scroll through the available operating areas or company divisions to find the section that she/he is looking for. This way, only the desired section will be expanded, making this page feel clean and easy to navigate.
Highlights:
It was a challenge to create a system that displays all the necessary information and all the divisions in a slick manner that does not chase users away, but rather keeps a user present or absorbed in the website by including all the information without letting the user realise the amount of information that is being consumed.
