Laborde Products | Gatorworks

Servicing approximately one-third of the U.S. with heavy-duty engines and over 20 years of experience, Laborde Products is a powerhouse in the engine distribution industry. Laborde works with top-of-the-line brands such as Mitsubishi, FPT, Yanmar, Hatz, Scania, and Steyr Motors to meet the needs of the marine and industrial markets.

Graphic Design, Logo/Branding, Web Design, Web Development

The Project

Laborde Products came to Gatorworks in need of a new logo, brand identity, and website that reflected the sophisticated and high-caliber power products they provide. The logo needed to be modern, sleek, bold, and versatile. With this in mind, Gatorworks set out to create a fresh brand identity for Laborde.

We were able to flex our creative prowess while exceeding client expectations by creating a striking brand presence that would distinguish Laborde from competitors and garner attention from potential customers.

Launch the Site

Key Features

Logo/Branding

Early in the process the Laborde team communicated the need to have a logo that was visually neutral between their two main industries—marine and industrial. Their previous logo featured a “wave” within the “L” which favored the marine sector of their business. As a family-owned business, it was also important to keep some sense of tradition. With these preferences in mind, our creative team kept the well-known Laborde “L” and gave it a complete makeover. We introduced bold typography, strategic positioning, and new elements to create an eye-catching final product. Of course, a logo refresh is not complete without a color palette. We tweaked the color of the main Laborde blue to a beautiful jetstream blue and expanded the palette to include a deep blue, power orange, and steel gray. The branding guidelines brought together the elements of the logo and branding in a comprehensive guide detailing logo use, color palette, typography, and more.

Collateral Pieces

Once the logo and branding were established, our next task was to tackle the outdated collateral the Laborde team used as a part of their sales processes.

Full-Suite Sales Sheet

The Laborde team needed an informative asset that could complement in-person and digital sales presentations. Once we received the information that needed to be included on the sheet, we designed a professional sales sheet that acted as a comprehensive asset detailing important product information by department. The full color palette was used to represent and differentiate each department.

Spec Sheets

Laborde had an assortment of outdated spec sheets that needed to be revamped. With over 100 products across the marine and industrial sectors, we knew that standardization was crucial. Our solution was to create a template that included important elements—including a product photo, output graph, specification chart, and contact information. The template allowed us to easily change out information for each product and give the Laborde team sophisticated ways to present important product information to customers.

Mega Navigation

Nothing is more frustrating than not being able to find what you need on a website. That is why Laborde had communicated early in the process the importance of having their wide selection of products easily accessible. With over 150 products from multiple manufacturers, organization was key. We worked with the client to create a product-specific sitemap. Once we had established the product hierarchy, our solution for displaying the products in a digestible manner was a mega navigation that organized the products by industry, category, and subcategory. Laborde services marine and industrial customers, so it was important that those tabs were front and center. Our design team then created custom iconography for the main categories to make them more discernible and eye-catching! Gatorworks created a solution that was not only aesthetically pleasing, but also functional.

Product Pages

Due to the sheer number of products and variance between the products, the product pages needed to be detailed, informative—and most importantly—effective at encouraging potential business. We created the following flexible page blocks to empower the Laborde team with the ability to add as manyproduct details as needed.

Breadcrumbs – Page breadcrumbs are extremely useful for websites that are content-heavy. The breadcrumbs reflect the website navigation in the sense that they show the hierarchy of pages and allow users to easily backtrack to previous pages. This feature was crucial for creating pathways to other related parts of the website.
Product Title – We created big, bold, SEO-friendly page titles to be easily recognized by users and search engines.
Product Subtitle – Subtitles provided the ability to further distinguish and organize products with descriptor text right below the page title, such as “Heavy Duty,” “Medium Duty,” and “Light Duty.”
Card Subtitle – The card subtitles were built to display engine horsepower on the product archive pages, since that is one of the primary specs customers look for when browsing products.
Manufacturer – We created a manufacturing-specific category to provide additional ways to find, display, and organize products.
Find a Dealer Button – In addition to the Find a Dealer button in the secondary navigation, we included a Find a Dealer button on the inner product pages. Since locating a dealer with the products or parts in need was a primary action for website users, we wanted to make sure it was represented adequately.
Product Image – Visual representation of products was extremely important as the caliber of the engines was a major differentiating factor.
Specs – While the other features of the product page are important, the specifications are the “meat” of the products as they represent the most important details of each product. We built out a page part with repeater fields that could include as manyspecifications as needed.
Spec Sheet – Spec sheets not only represent the most important aspects of each product, but they are also great sales tools for the Laborde team to utilize. So we included a section for spec sheets to be viewed and downloaded.
Product Description – The description block allowed for secondary information about the product to be displayed.
Request a Quote – The main purpose behind the product pages is to encourage leads in the form of product inquiries, so we built in a section for a CTA (call-to-action) at the bottom of each product page. For ease of use, we made the default CTA consistent across all product pages. For products that needed a more customized message, we built a custom CTA option.

Find a Dealer Feature

One of the primary goals of the website is to encourage users to locate dealers near their location. To accomplish this goal, we built out a “Locate a Dealer” page that reflected their previous Dealer page with additional bells and whistles to improve user-friendliness. To help users filter and organize the dealer information based on need, we created a few key features.

Filters

Due to the amount of moving variables for each product, it was important to have an intuitive filtering system for users to quickly find information. We created two filtering options—a filter by industry and a filter by manufacturer—as we knew those were the two primary ways a user would search. By tagging dealers in the backend by their industry and manufacturer, users can easily locate a dealer.

Views

Everyone consumes information differently, and that’s why we provided two viewports for viewing the dealer information. Our first view is the map view, which is very convenient for users looking for a dealer near them or in a particular city/state/region. Users can click on a map pin to get the name of the dealer, the address, phone number, and links to get directions and view the dealership page. The second view is the list view, which provides a table of pertinent information for each dealer. The “Industry” column of the table also ties in the custom iconography used in the mega navigation.

Manufacturer pages

The individual pages for each manufacturer are similar to the product pages in that they feature the most detailed information. Users are able to see the name of the dealer, address, phone number, manufacturers offered at the dealer location, relevant industries offered, and a Google map of the location with a link to get directions. The ordering of information from Map view > List view > individual dealer pages reflects our strategy of organizing content hierarchically for ease of use.

Summary

Through numerous hours of internal brainstorming, site mapping, client communication, and meetings to ensure client happiness of deliverables, Gatorworks created a sophisticated, professional website that will continue to power Laborde’s success in the industry of powerful products.