Moto-Lita



Moto-Lita manufacture classic British steering wheels. Based at the Thruxton Racing Circuit this close-knit family of craftsmen sell their hand-made products to customers around the world. After several abortive attempts to create an E-Commerce site the owners approached Design Haus with their problem. How to sell a steering wheel online. Its not as easy as it sounds since there are various options that need to be covered so that the correct wheel is bought.




The first step in creating the new Moto-Lita website was to create a "look and feel" that captured the tradition of this classic British company while updating it for the digital age. Design Haus cleaned up the hand-drawn logo that had been used since the company's inception, designed a palette of colours that included British Racing Green and commissioned some new photography. The end result is a site that manages to capture the strong traditions of the company while adding a high-tech interface to the product catalogue and information pages. The product pages feature the latest AJAX and CSS layout techniques.

The most challenging design aspect for the Moto-Lita site was not the "look and feel", but rather the central problem of creating an interface that makes it easy to purchase a steering wheel. There are a number of options to consider when purchasing a wheel, such as size required, shape of the wheel, the metal finish and the Boss Kit (connects the wheel to the steering column). Design Haus came up with a layout that made liberal use of AJAX and CSS to make the process of choosing the wheel as simple as possible.

So far the site has experienced strong sales and it looks as though the design and interface is working well.

The most significant challenge presented from the Moto-Lita website was the number of available options for each wheel. A steering wheel is never just bought on its own and is also available with many customisable options.

It was decided at design time we would try our best to make everything work on a single screen with no refreshes, to go totally dynamic. We used AJAX and CSS technologies to obtain information from a database and present it on the page without the need for the main page to be submitted to the server, admittedly after many head-scratching moments!

The feedback from the client and their customers has been very positive about the ease of making an order from something that used to be very cumbersome.