Overview: 

Hiatus Campers is revolutionizing the pop-up truck camper experience with a patented hard-walled folding system and a full suite of camper upgrades and customizations. Their product is lightweight, streamlined, and fully customizable. From the overall camper size right down to placement of the windows, you can truly make this camper your own. 

When we initially connected, the team at Hiatus needed help maintaining their existing site and an outdated order form. Ultimately, we determined that the best way to connect with the target market and draw users into the customized experience was to create a brand new site.

“Our old website was outdated and needed some crucial updates to improve the user experience. Some of the forms had bugs that eventually prevented them from working altogether. It also hadn’t been redesigned in a few years and we wanted a fresh face lift that could draw the customer in.”

-Erin Sofinowski – Co-Owner Hiatus Campers

Fresh Lines Approach: 

Strategy

We started with my comprehensive brand strategy service to really dive deep into the driving factors behind the Hiatus Camper brand. During this process, we discovered their target audience was divided into two distinct demographics, which keywords worked best to target those demographics, and how to uniquely position their brand in a saturated market. We then turned all of these inisghts into actionable design concepts to best tell their story and connect with their market.

“I really appreciated the attention to detail and ease of working together. [Katie] first set out to get to know us and our company, which I believe helped our ideas come through more clearly. Previously we hadn’t been asked about our goals, mission, or customers.”

Strategy through Design

As a boutique brand focused on delivering an innovative product, we wanted to depart from the black and white tones that feel ubiquitous to the truck camper industry and really emulate a sense of adventure throughout the site. With the help of an updated color palette and a large library of vivid imagery I think we hit the nail on the head.

Additionally we wanted to find an engaging way to convey important information like standard and add-on features, product specifications and customer testimonials. To tackle this task we used animations to show the camper popping up and down, a product walkthrough section that highlighted different features as you scrolled through the page and a product specs toolbar to display the weight, and size of each camper size.

We decided the best way to guide their users towards a purchase was to build a comprehensive product building tool that empowered the end user to customize their camper with all the bells and whistles. The idea here was to lead the user through an interactive order form that would update an image as well as the total price as they added certain features. We also wanted to make sure we only showed them options that were applicable to their selected model. This objective served two goals. Not only was it designed to boost sales but it also worked to streamline internal workflows and reduce back and forth with the customer once the order was placed.

“Our previous form for accepting orders was clunky and did not really work how we wanted it to. It allowed you to select features, but did not describe what those features were or populate what they looked like. Creating a 3D model that would update as you selected options really leveled up the feel of the order form and made it much easier on the customer. They could see what exactly they were selectingand could tell us where they wanted something. This provided clarity to the customer, which lessened the amount of time spent going back and forth on email with pictures or screenshots. Now more time can be spent diving into who the customer is, what their goals are, and focusing on their interactions with us. We prioritize and enjoy relationship building during the ordering process which has only benefited our experiences with our customers (for both parties!).”

Results – 

The refreshed Hiatus site is exactly what the owners wanted. In addition to each of the features outlined above, we worked on SEO and site speed optimization to make sure the site reaches as many potential customers as possible.

The new site has produced a 60% increase in sales and driven over 83,000 users to the site in the six months since launching. I couldn’t be more excited for the future of Hiatus Campers. Check out the Hiatus site and build your own rig, but be warned, you’ll probably want to buy one!

“We’ve only heard positive things from our customers! They described how much easier it was to navigate the site and make decisions on their campers. They loved the 3D product builder and appreciated that you could see what features would look like and how the costs were adding up. It is a more clear and transparent process which eliminates confusion on either side because we could both reference the choices they were selecting. Being a small company, an online presence is crucial and we really feel like the form not only elevated how professional our site looked, but also made it fun and engaging for our customers!”