A website that’s a cut above the rest

BladeRunner, a plasterboard cutting tool which saves time and reduces the amount of injuries on site, has proved a phenomenal success.

CIB were asked by Artex Ltd to design and produce all of the marketing collateral associated with the launch of BladeRunner in the UK, which included packaging, POS, print adverts and a sales video.

A key part of the launch campaign was the product website. Although Artex Ltd and its parent company Saint Gobain already have corporate websites, they wanted to really push the BladeRunner product. As such, CIB was tasked with developing a website (http://www.gyprocbladerunner.com) that would attract four key audiences:

1) Channels
2) Contractors
3) Influencers
4) International colleagues (other Saint Gobain businesses)

Because BladeRunner is such an innovative product, the features and benefits of the product were the focus of the website. CIB developed flash animations to illustrate each of these in order to push these in an imaginative and memorable way. The use of flash animation also makes the website stand out from other text heavy product focused websites.

The website also incorporates the sales video, an FAQ section, stockist locator, news section and a page dedicated the accessories available for BladeRunner.

Ensuring that the website was flexible was of key importance to the client, so CIB built a content management system into its design. Once the website had been completed, CIB held a remote content management training session for key members of the Artex staff. The content management system allows Artex to alter any of the content of the website as they so wish, with the exception of the flash animations.

Due to BladeRunner’s success, other international Saint Gobain businesses began to stock and sell the product. Obviously, each of these businesses wanted a web presence for the product. Artex Ltd asked CIB to devise website toolkit which they could provide to each of the countries interested.

The toolkits, which were based on http://www.gyprocbladerunner.com, provided recipients with page templates and a framework that allowed each of the countries to edit the text of their own site. However, other elements such as the images and BladeRunner logos remained locked in order to ensure that the brand remained consistent. The flash animations were also replaced with static images to ensure that the website was not cost prohibitive.

To ensure that the original UK site was not compromised, or users did not have to click too many times to get to the information they required, a landing page was added to the front of the site. This broke the countries that BladeRunner is available in down by the three international Saint Gobain brands: Placo, Gyproc and Rigips. Visitors are able to click on their country’s flag, which directs them to their regional site. However, if this has not been developed yet, they are given contact details of someone to speak to regarding the BladeRunner product.

The site has proved very popular, still achieving visitor numbers of 4,499 in January of this year, 6 months after its launch, as such the Artex team have been working with CIB to identify ways in which to add functionality to the UK website, including plans to turn it into an e-commerce site.