In early 2005, global telecom company UTStarcom acquired the cell phone division of Audiovox. Click Here was picked to guide the company's online development efforts to promote the new division. To set the stage for how intricate the website development project itself would be, UTStarcom wanted to launch their U.S. cell phone division with 20-plus phone models — some of them holdovers from Audiovox and some new models. Each phone model can be supported by 16 or more carriers — and since carriers determine which phone features they support, the possible model-carrier combinations are quite extensive.
Because wireless communications is such a competitive industry, setting our client apart would require an approach that no one else appeared to be taking — a simple one. Visitors needed to find the phone or wireless device they were looking for quickly and easily. The site had to be easily searchable and visitors needed to sort devices and phones by carrier and/or feature. Our goals were to give people a good sense of each model's features and specifications, and highlight certain features and specifications in a compelling way — all without making the user experience overwhelming.
Our creative, information architecture/content and development teams worked closely together to create an innovative, yet straightforward way of displaying phone information. The client encouraged us to experiment with the newly released Flash 8, so we were able to make the phones and data devices the heroes of the site via a user-initiated carousel. To allow for future additions, we made the site's structure inherently scalable, while a content management system would allow the client's internal team to handle site maintenance. Finally, we worked closely with UTStar.com's technical support team to integrate the new section into the existing UTStar.com.