Bendix website screenshots

The Companies

Invision The Design Agency

Invision is an extremely talented design agency based out of Australia that excels at helping high profile clients achieve new heights in creativity and design.

Bendix

Bendix, now known as the FMP Group, is an insanely cool manufacturing company that offers a full range of friction material for passenger and commercial vehicles, and custom application. Not sure what that means? They make a large range of disc brake pads. They are also, get this, affiliated with Honeywell Inc. (USA), one of the world’s largest aerospace companies, which gives them access to the latest technology and techniques.

The Situation

Invision reached out to the monkeys because they needed an experienced Drupal developer to assist them with the more technical side the web development project they were working on for their client Bendix. Bendix the ‘real’ client in question had a website presence, but it wasn’t responsive (i.e. it was slow and it didn’t play well on different screen sizes) and there was so much going on that it was hard for potential clients to navigate and website administrators to manage. It was what you might call a Frankenstein situation.

The Solution

At Cheeky Monkey, the developer monkeys were thrilled to get their hands on such a fun and multifaceted project. We love getting our hands dirty! After consultation with the team at Invision and the client Bendix, we decided to tackle first things first.

Bendix’s site was built on Drupal 6 and used a lot of custom code that wasn’t optimized as well as it could have been. We cleaned that up using best practices making the website easier to maintain and update.

Next, we took a look at the different modules (those add-ons that let you do things like post to social media, use paypal, etc) and made sure that website was using the most efficient and secure options.

Then we looked at responsiveness. We made some general theming and interface adjustments and used advanced gd implementation to build dynamic images. Using this approach and the code we optimized in step one, we ensured the website would load quickly and work on screens of different sizes.

Once we got the basics taken care of, we tackled usability. Step one here was to set up google mapping tools and visibility. These tools allow users to select where they are located so that they only see information and options most relevant to them. A must in today’s day and age. Then we set up a commerce store. Bendix is a large manufacturer that is committed to fantastic customer service. The online shopping experience had to deliver. We made sure it would.

But we weren’t done yet. At the request of Bendix, the monkeys set up an exclusive members area where members could receive specialized content and notifications just for them. These days, if it’s not specialized to the user it’s just not going to stand out from the crowd, ya know?

And finally, it’s not only the end user’s (the person viewing your website) experience that counts. If the people updating your website on the business end of things are having a rough time, things are gonna get messy really quickly. No one wanted that to happen so we set up an easy to use admin interface so website administrators could update and manage vehicle content, affiliate company data, and users without losing their minds or developing ulcers.

Now, customers can order their specialized disc brake pads seamlessly, all while enjoying a clear and intuitive website experience. And the website administrators? They’re pretty happy too.

Oh, right, the design company that hired us? We’re definitely going for a beer the next time we’re down under.