Charlatte America

Charlatte America builds battery-powered ground-support vehicles, tow tractors, baggage tractors, belt loaders and pushback tractors used by airports and industrial operators across the U.S. and Europe. Part of the Fayat Group, the company manufactures out of a large facility in Bluefield, Virginia, with engineering and testing on site.

The vehicles themselves already ran clean. The brand around them had not caught up: little in the way of a distinct voice, and no website built to speak to the people actually making the buying decision.

Planet Media developed a brand personality, voice and story for Charlatte America, then built that story into a new website. The process started with personas, wireframes, site maps and flowcharts, so the UX/UI design would speak to both the fleet manager evaluating uptime and the sustainability lead evaluating emissions.

From there the team handled design and development end to end, along with SEO and usability testing, so the site could carry the brand consistently from first impression to spec sheet.

Charlatte America now has a digital presence that carries one coherent story, from the first page a visitor lands on to the specs of the vehicle they are researching, built to serve both the engineers who spec the equipment and the buyers who sign off on it.

Buying a fleet of ground-support vehicles is not an impulse. It runs through a fleet manager who needs uptime figures, a maintenance lead who needs to know parts are available, a sustainability lead who needs emissions numbers for a report, and a finance signature at the end. Four people, four different questions, one website.

So the structure follows those questions rather than the product catalogue. The fleet is split into the seven lines the industry actually uses, baggage tractors, belt loaders, lav trucks, pushback tractors, tow tractors, chassis and ground power units, and each one opens into its own specifications instead of a shared brochure page. Someone who arrives knowing they need a belt loader is two clicks from the numbers they came for.

The company pages carry the part of the answer that has nothing to do with the vehicle. Manufacturing in Bluefield, Virginia, warranty terms, field service and parts availability sit where a fleet manager looks for them, because on a purchase this size the question is rarely whether the machine works. It is what happens in year three when something breaks.

Everything holds up on a tablet, which is the screen most likely to be open on a hangar floor rather than at a desk. The featured product and the sales blog keep working at that width, so a conversation on site can end on the page rather than in a follow-up email.

Underneath it, the site was wireframed from personas before a single visual was drawn, then tested for usability and built for search, so the pages that answer the buying questions are the pages that get found.