New Look, New Experience, New Possibilities for Estes

Services Web Content + Collaboration, Design + Development, UX Research + Design, Website Design

A fully transformed customer experience improves usability and helps to generate more revenue

As the largest privately owned LTL carrier in the US with a complex operation that services virtually all key industries across the U.S., Estes wanted to enhance its overall digital experience and website to better service customers and make it easier to transact online. Additionally, the aging site was becoming more difficult to maintain while updates had become increasingly challenging and expensive. It required a significant amount of time, money, and people to properly implement changes without impacting day-to-day business operations and revenue. Estes wanted to re-platform its customer-facing applications, implement a new content management system, and improve the overall customer journey to drive better online marketing of its services, improve insights, and raise customer retention and loyalty.

A highly informed and collaborative strategy

We partnered with Estes in an initial assessment to understand what the right tools were to create a better online experience, both for its website and its 30+ customer-facing web applications that are at the core of its interaction model with customers. The whole experience was designed in collaboration with Estes teams and customers to ensure every piece of the puzzle from inception to execution aligned with its original vision.

User-centered research and design best practices were followed throughout the project to ensure usability and adoption would be high. CapTech implemented the solution alongside the Estes team, with CapTech owning the front-end and content management implementation, while Estes owned services and data. After planning, building, and testing, CapTech and Estes partnered to push the new digital experience out to its customer base through a phased, iterative rollout strategy.

We rolled out the new digital experience through a pilot to ensure system quality and collect user feedback. Then, we launched to the entire customer base. The full launch was smooth and presented little additional overhead to the Estes operational team.

A user-friendly website that encourages customers to keep coming back

Estes’ website and customer web applications now match and align with the company’s place as a national leader in transportation services. The website has seen a significant decrease in pages per session as well as average session duration, indicating that the new user experience is more intuitive and direct, allowing users to find what they need faster. Mobile-first use of the site has also increased by 86% and its shipment tracking landing page has seen a 17% increase in Google traffic (a top goal of the transformation).

For the marketing team, the new dotCMS content management system allows Estes to rapidly make updates to its website and make its customer experience more streamlined and effortless. Their all-new web applications and web pages are fully responsive, whereas previously the majority of applications could not be used on a mobile or tablet device. Finally, the design of the platform complements Estes’ new and improved brand strategy to better market the organization’s services to its customers.

The new site, and the insights it captures, encourages customers to keep coming back and will enable Estes to increase revenue and stay one step ahead of its industry peers.

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