Rapid digital transformation is happening everywhere, including the automotive industry. SCC - Sports Car Center is not satisfied with just keeping up with the other players in the field; it wants to be a trendsetter. “We do things our way and set a high bar for the quality of the customer experience. Our vision is to create something new for the entire industry, even online. This is the level that we are aiming for with our new online store and we wanted the design to reflect that,” Miikka Råman, Marketing Manager for the SCC, describes the outset of the project.
SCC - Sports Car Center is a pioneer in quality – even online
Sports Car Center is Finland’s largest premium and exclusive multibrand car dealership chain. The online store was seen as an opportunity to make the chain’s top-quality services even more readily available to customers. A high bar was set for the layout and customer experience. Lamia rose to the occasion and designed a UI Kit and layout for the new online store – with an emphasis on high quality.
Many channels, one first-rate customer experience
The online store is new territory for SCC, and includes updating the existing website and bringing the entire customer journey online. The solution needs to work in the long term.
“We want a good digital motor that can be tailored to our needs and that will not limit us three years from now. We are a specialized store with special cases – the online service needs to adapt to this,” Miikka explains the challenges of the project. As the design process got underway, the central criteria for the service was that it needed to be flexible and adaptable to rapid changes – new services, new solutions, and new requests from customers.
SCC wants to provide comprehensive services to all of its customers. Today, that may be someone whose car needs servicing; tomorrow, a customer wanting to purchase a vehicle; the day after that, a customer looking for replacement parts. The entire customer journey needs to be as easy as possible regardless of which service touchpoint that the interaction happens at.
“Taking our entire business online is not a viable option in our industry because visiting a physical store plays a prominent role in the customer journey. However, it is important for us to have an online store that offers the same services as a physical store and that the customer can trust completely. This is the hybrid customer experience that we now want to provide our customers,” Miikka describes the objectives of the project.
“We need to be able to provide all of our customers with the same customer experience in a physical store, online, and at any other service touchpoint. We also want to be able to flexibly modify this customer experience.”
Listening and aha moments
In the early service design phase of the project, we collected the needs, wants, and challenges of the most important customer groups, both consumer and corporate. Interviews with the target group and the views of the SCC team were combined and we quickly proceeded to design the layout and prototypes for the new service.
“The interviews with the target groups identified the needs related to the user account and requests for features related to the maintenance of the customers’ cars. Of course, we had to prioritize features, and so not all of the requests made it into the design, but the service design phase gave SCC vast amounts of additional information on the service currently in the works, which can also be used in future development,” Service Designer Suvi Kankaanpää and UI/UX Designer Akseli Väisänen explain.
The project was implemented efficiently and in collaboration with the customer. “We had weekly meetings, during which we looked through the designs, bounced ideas off of each other, and then made decisions. This was efficient, quick, and easy for us,” Miikka praises the work methods.
There were also some twists along the way. One of them was realizing the need to include replacement parts in the online service after interviewing the target groups and designing the customer journey, thereby leading to the expansion of the service. The initial plans for the replacement part service along with a multisite functionality were introduced to the layouts.
Miikka highlights the importance of listening in the service design phase: “Lamia’s designers quickly understood our world. This is not always a given, but Lamia’s team succeeded fantastically.”
In addition to efficiency, additional value was also gained from creativity: “We had actual lightbulb moments that opened up new perspectives. I am sure the layouts include ideas that we could not have come up with on our own. Lamia gave us a good range of suggestions – from one extreme to the other – and in the middle ground we were able to find a visual look and customer experience that suited our needs. This was the point where our business model and digital creativity met.”
“When developing something new, you need to be able to read the situation and customer. I wanted us to be challenged and for us to find new ideas. Lamia rose to the occasion.”
High expectations, great results
Lamia created new layouts for SCC’s marketing website and online store. The most important views included various navigation views and views for different automobile brands. Search engine optimization was also taken into account in order to maximize organic visibility.
We also compiled a UI Kit, which includes all important UI elements and supplements SCC’s brand book. This makes uniform branding easy across all digital channels.
“I had high expectations for the design, and Lamia met them fully. We received a blueprint for building the online store and now that we know the look, feel and UI logic we are going for, building the service is going to be easy,” Miikka summarizes.
