The background
With brands such as Hayman Reese, ROLA, PIAK, and Kaymar, AutoPacific needed a scalable solution to streamline the management of its growing digital presence while maintaining brand consistency, technical efficiency, and ease of content management.
Each brand operates independently but needs to align with the overarching brand and digital strategy.
AutoPacific and NOW designed a streamlined solution to address this need. It allows each brand to create subsites from a centralised design system while maintaining brand consistency, governance, and technical efficiency.
The challenge
Facing multiple challenges in managing its digital ecosystem, NOW defined the key areas of focus:
- Brand inconsistency: As no unified design or branding guidelines existed, website creation was independent of a centralised approach, leading to a fragmented user experience and diluted brand identity.
- Scalability and maintainability: The absence of a centralised system meant that every new website required custom development, significantly increasing costs, and extending the time to market for launching digital properties.
- Technical complexity. Supporting multiple CMS platforms, hosting environments, and third-party integrations created inefficiencies, making it challenging to implement updates, maintain security standards, and ensure seamless interoperability across digital properties.
AutoPacific needed a strategy that would standardise the creation and management of subsites while maintaining flexibility for individual brands to tailor their digital presence to specific needs.
The solution
NOW Digital designed and developed a centralised design system, utilising the power of the Shopify platform, allowing AutoPacific and its associated brands to manage multiple subsites efficiently under a unified framework.
The key components of our solution included:
The central site and unified platform
We built a central website toolkit that acted as the core digital hub. Its scalable architecture allowed the creation of subsites through a structured process. The platform was developed using Shopify to enable the power of commerce with flexibility, efficiency, and seamless content distribution across all subsites.
Modular design system and component library
To ensure brand consistency and ease of development, we created a modular design system comprising reusable UI components, templates, and branding guidelines. This system empowered business units to quickly generate subsites with predefined themes and elements, ensuring a seamless look and feel while accommodating unique content needs.
Performance and accessibility optimisation
We embedded performance and accessibility best practices into the design system, ensuring that all subsites met WCAG compliance standards and delivered an optimal user experience. The platform was optimised for mobile responsiveness, SEO, and fast load times, enhancing both usability and search engine visibility.
Implementing a central site and design system transformed AutoPacific’s digital ecosystem, providing a scalable, cost-effective, and brand-aligned solution for managing multiple subsites. By standardising website creation and maintenance, we achieved greater efficiency, improved governance, and enhanced user experiences across all digital touchpoints.