ram trucks:
UPFITTER EXPERIENCE

BRAND AWARENESS + UX ENGAGEMENT

THE ASK:

"What is an upfit, and do I need one?" This is the driving 2-part question RAM Trucks came to us with. Upfits are 3rd party additions that can be custom-built for vehicles to better suit their industry and/or their daily workload.

We needed to build a website where business owners or fleet directors could visit to get an informed estimation of what Upfits are typically available for each of their vehicles while generating a sales pipeline for their BusinessLINK funnel.

Participation
Art Direction Illustration
UX/UI Design
UX Research

Client
FCA

Year
2015

THE CHALLENGE:

We had some extreme limitations on this one. We needed to use their existing CMS platform which constrained our ability to animate or create interactive areas for visitors. We didn’t have any budget for CGI, so all 3D assets were off the table.

We also had limited insight or information into what Upfits were available or in-use as all Upfitters are 3rd party installers and do not want to share assets or technical information, regardless of our connection to the auto manufacturer. We were in a bit of a pickle, so we had to think creatively.

THE PROCESS:

Since we weren’t getting assets or collateral from the upfitter partners, we asked them what they WOULD be willing to share, and that got us far better results.

2 Salespeople
3 Installers
4 Sales Catalogs
2 Salespeople
4 Installers
1 Sales Catalog
4 Salespeople
2 Installers
10 Sales Catalogs
2 Salespeople
4 Installers
4 Sales Catalogs

UPFITTER INTERVIEWS

Create Hand-drawn illustrations based on previously rendered & approved assets from the client’s DAM platform.
Vet all illustrations through FCA's Product/Brand/Legal Teams for accuracy & relevance.
Each approved vehicle illustration will need to have several uplifts to view in-situation.
Leverage available team talent with cutting-edge software & hardware to mimic 3D output in a 2D environment.

Asset Challenges

After gathering our Research results, we were able to not only able to make informed decisions on which Upfits to feature on which vehicles, but we were also able to estimate Towing & Payload weights by balancing the approximate weight of the vehicle against the weight of the Upfit to allow visitors to have an additional function the client desperately wanted: weight requirements for specific combinations of uplifts & vehicles by industry. This way visitors could see which truck or van would be capable of being the tool they need it to be before making a monetary investment. An educational playground that leads to a sales funnel. Now we just needed to build it.

As we started illustrating the upfits, we began working on the UX layout of the experience. After some testing, we found that users wanted to sandbox different upfits on different vehicles via a step-by-step “build” experience. We used play & curiosity as a primary driver for key user engagement and repeated value add.

While the UX/UI Design was being finalized, the rest of the team worked on key illustrations required to showcase how upfits “fit” on to specific models.

Each of these drawings needed to be brand-agnostic with unidentifiable features to avoid any potential legal challenges with upfitters.

We also created custom iconography and background images specific for the engagement’s environment.

The cherry on top ended up being the new Towing & Payload calculator which improved conversion rate immensely while offering consumers a tool to estimate budgets and understand how to collaborate with RAM Commercial on refining their workhorse vehicles with the best upfit for the job.

THE RESULTS:

Our team built this in 5 months with very limited budget and resources. It went on to win several awards and was live on the RAM Commercial website for over 6 years!

They have since updated and adjusted the content to better fit the brand shift in look & style, but the page still operates very closely to how we built this in 2015. I’m very proud of everyone who helped bring this to life!