MICROSOFT SURFACE STORIES. A REAL PAGE TURNER.

The Brief

Westcoast needed to provide integrated marketing support to Microsoft, demonstrating that they could work to improve sales of the Surface product range further down the channel via their own customers (resellers and retailers). Central to this was an online facility that would give Westcoast’s customers some great tools to promote and sell the products more efficiently, primarily by enabling them to educate their own customers, and showcasing all the benefits of purchasing Microsoft Surface products. Given the breadth of the product range and vast scope of the industry sectors served, it was crucial that the site was easy to navigate and engaging enough to nudge the user through all the rich content to find what best suited their business, and ultimately make a purchase decision.

The Response

The first thing we did was assemble a ‘Taskforce’ of resellers to give us intelligence on our target audience. We were also all ears to their honest opinions on the Microsoft Surface products, their past experience, and any obstacles they may have encountered.

We built a website centred around stories. Entitled ‘Surface Stories’, at its heart were four online interactive narratives that each sold a whole concept for a separate Surface product (Surface Book 2, Surface Pro, Surface Laptop and Surface Studio).

On the first page of every story an animation brings everything to life and jumping off the page, while the headline font and a right to left page swipe helps embellish the rich story-telling theme. Reviews (testimonials), integral to all stories, are given a central prominence, and a circular ‘loading’ wheel, placed around the story number, gives a visual guide to the viewer for charting their progress through a story, giving them feedback throughout. Yet navigation and function were just as vital as the engaging content.

The website is exceptionally easy to navigate; gently and effortlessly nudging Westcoast’s customers to read and absorb the entire site. From any part of the website, you are only two clicks away from any piece of content, be it testimonials, product videos, downloadable pitch templates, and case studies.

Westcoast Ltd is the number one UK distributor for many leading IT brands, such as HP, Microsoft, Lenovo, and Apple. Consistently ranked in the Sunday Times Top Track of the 100 Largest Privately-owned UK Companies.

The Results

So good we added the full product range and made a round of insightful improvements and updates thanks to feedback from our taskforce. But don’t take our word for it…

Review the site.