Private sector, Finance
Business Development, Marketing
Brand strategy, website design and development, copywriting, 3D rendering
EllisJames helped Portman Asset Finance launch their new sub-brand, Harrington – a specialist sports and luxury car finance provider – with a stunning new website.
Harrington is the brainchild of Portman Asset Finance’s MD, Alex Read. A self-acknowledged petrol head himself, he wanted to provide a range of tailored financial services specifically aimed at sports and luxury car drivers.
Portman brought the Harrington project to EllisJames after we had successfully delivered Portman’s own new website earlier that year.
Portman had gone some way to develop an initial Harrington site themselves. However, we were able to bring an unbiased reflection on the working site’s ability to deliver to the Harrington brand objectives, and evolved the design and site plan significantly.
We wanted to make the site driver-focused and reflect Harrington’s own passion for motoring, demonstrating alignment with their audience, and deepening the brand differentiation.
The site is designed to look ‘glossier than a new car bonnet’. We were able to persuade Harrington to eschew stock imagery of cars in favour of 3D renders, which gave us limitless control of lighting, colouring and position. Other vehicle imagery is super close-up – intimate with the details of beautiful vehicle design.
In other areas of the site, we focused not on cars but the experience of driving them, with a series of the UK’s best driving roads and links to those routes on Google maps.
SEO is critical to the success of a site like this, and one way to do that is through SEO-focused copywriting. This is often key-word fodder and of little literary interest, but we didn’t want to waste the opportunity to deliver added-value, meaning and deeper brand engagement. Consequently, we spent a lot of time researching the history of vehicle marques and creating an interesting read for true car lovers.
Has to be the 3D rendering. It was a bigger challenge than anticipated, and Harrington have a great eye for detail, so we worked hard to achieve a realistic premium result (while also keeping the site load times to a minimum).
The result is gorgeous. A stunning selection of exemplar vehicles that underlines the Harrington brand, and distinguishes the site from any other operator in the sector.
Going the extra mile to deliver quality content
The copywriting for Harrington was very fulfilling and we went the extra mile to deliver quality content. Mark Woolfe, Portman’s programme manager for the Harrington site, remarked: “The pages read like they were a labour of love.” And that is exactly what we intended, for the site to engage car lovers.
