Southern Tire Mart Website Redesign

Challenge

Southern Tire Mart is a national chain with stores across the southern U.S. The company’s web presence had largely taken a back seat to the direct B2C and B2B customer relationships provided by its tire shops. The time came for STM to catch up with its competitors and offer a better web experience with a more robust online tire catalog and detailed information about services available at each store location.

Solution

STM had been maintaining three website: corporate, retail and commercial—with many redundancies across the different sites. The decision was made to combine them into one, providing less confusing user experiences and less work for STM to maintain three sites. I created a consolidated information architecture incorporating all the desired content from each site. Then I developed desktop and mobile wireframes. After the wireframes were tested with retail and commercial users, final adjustments were made and the site moved into visual design and development.

My role

• Information architecture
• Wireframes
• Usability testing
• Visual design consultation

This project was done on contract for LimeLight Marketing.

WIREFRAMES

(Switch between desktop and mobile views with toolbar at top of wireframes.)

Slide to see BEFORE & AFTER:
FROM three SITES TO ONE

Before the redesign, after finding Southern Tire Mart with a Google search, users would first need to choose between the corporate, commercial and retail websites before they could begin doing what they started out to do—find tires or service for their vehicles. After the redesign, everything is in one place, with easy location-based access to their nearest store. I designed tire shopping widget that appears at the top of the home page, giving users ready access to the right tires for their car, truck, SUV or commercial vehicle.