Luxury Website Design: Aston Martin

How the quintessentially British brand has created a luxury web presence to prompt exploration.

Luxury cars need luxury websites. The quality and attention to detail that customers have come to expect from a brands products should be evident across their service and throughout their online presence. 

Aston Martin, one of the best-known British car manufacturers, combine their British heritage with luxury and speed in order to create an unrivalled car experience. We know their cars are at the top of their game, but what about their website? 

In this article we’ll take a look at how they’ve created a luxury website that infuses a modern twist with the classic features of the brand. 

For luxury brands like Aston Martin, having a website that’s functional yet chic, accessible yet exclusive is essential and the team at KIJO have years of experience in creating luxury websites that provide exactly that.  

The Brand at a Glance

Founded in 1913, Aston Martin has become an iconic, global brand that’s synonymous with luxury, style, performance and speed. 

Based in England, the brand combines the latest technologies with time-honoured craftsmanship to create iconic cars such as the Vantage and DBS models.

Still manufactured in England and Wales, the brand has become synonymous with another British icon, James Bond. The Aston Martin DB5 debuted back in 1964 in the film Goldfinger and has been the chosen car of choice for 007 ever since. 

Internal changes in 2020 also saw the brand return to the world of motorsports in the shape of the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team, marking a pinnacle moment in the history of British motorsports.

The Humble Homepage: Encouraging Visitors to Explore

Aston Martin’s homepage is interactive from the get-go. Offering visitors the chance to explore their latest car models with the use of interactive videos and graphics. 

The clever thing here is that Aston Martin combine close-up clips and drivers-eye videos to highlight the experience of an Aston Martin. They aren’t shouting about how great it is to drive their cars, they’re showing you. 

Calls to action here include “Explore” and “Take Your Seat”, a theme that runs throughout the Aston Martin website. The subtlety of allowing users to explore and experience their models and services works far better than obvious sales CTA’s for their target audience. 

Scrolling down the homepage brings up features such as limited edition special projects, coming soon models and a link to the pre-owned Aston Martin collection. 

The content of the Aston Martin homepage focuses on highlighting the timeless nature of the cars combined with the innovative and new models that ensure the brand remains a stalwart of the luxury vehicle industry. 

The final section of the Aston Martin homepage features the latest company news and updates. This section stands out from the rest of the design due to it’s stark white background which contrasts against the dark colour scheme that the rest of the homepage adopts. 

The overall impression given from the Aston Martin homepage is that this is a website to explore and interact with, not one to idly visit. A reflection perhaps of the cars themselves? 

Special Features: Showcasing an Iconic Brand

The key thing you note from the Aston Martin website is that this isn’t a website to purchase a car from. 

In fact, it’s not even a website where you’ll find that much information on their models. Certainly not enough to make an informed purchase decision for a vehicle that will set you back at least a cool £100,000. 

Aston Martin are an iconic brand and as such are able to rely on that status throughout their online presence. Their website isn’t there to sell you a specific model, it’s there to sell you the brand. 

For many, the model comes second to the fact that they’re driving an Aston Martin. It’s a name that comes with prestige, something that couldn’t be clearer from the website. 

Whilst the website may not provide visitors with in-depth model information, a clever feature of their drop-down menu is a breakdown of their top models, which features data such as top speed and power right there in the menu bar. 

This customised menu allowed users to easily determine which model pages they want to visit, encouraging them to dismiss options that aren’t right for them without having to visit a new web page each time. 

Arguably what sets Aston Martin apart from some of its luxury car competitors is its heritage. This is a quintessential, British brand that has been loved, admired and trusted for generations. 

This selling point is noted throughout the website but nowhere more so than on the dedicated heritage page. Here, a combination of black and white photographs and text depict the story of the brand in easy-to-digest chunks. 

If you didn’t know how iconic the Aston Martin brand was through history before, you will once you’ve landed on this page.

User Experience: Journey’s aren’t Just for Cars 

A journey in an Aston Martin is surely like no other. Smooth and sleek, fast and powerful and a journey through the brands website should be no different. So, does the user experience of their website match the user experience of their cars? Almost.

The main navigation menu runs along the top of the website and the main categories feature multiple sub-pages within the drop-down menu. A clever way of ensuring the homepage and menu aren’t overcrowded with the mass of content the website has to offer. 

Unlike usual header menus however, Aston Martin’s doesn’t stick to the top of the page as you scroll down meaning you’ll have to scroll back to the top of the page to navigate through the website. A small detail but for a brand with such a focus on unrivalled experiences, one that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Whilst the Aston Martin website has a vast array of content to offer visitors, the amount of text is kept to a minimum throughout. 

Instead, almost every page is headed with a full-width video that takes over the entire screen with the option for users to explore further and scroll down for more content. This  use of video throughout the website ensures the content is easy to absorb. 

Displaying their content in this way further ties into the website’s aim of encouraging exploration of their brand, rather than presenting visitors with streams of information. 

The homepage features a luxury take on a sliding header which showcases various Aston Martin models for users to explore. Each model is depicted with a fast-paced video and graphics that manage to replicate the experience and senses of driving an Aston Martin. 

The combination of the fast-paced clips and the dark color scheme can make the content hard to fully appreciate for users who are not familiar with content in this style.

If a user is visiting the website to enquire about making a purchase then they’ll be directed to contact dealerships individually. There’s no price list or product listings, helping to create a sense on exclusivity and intrigue for potential and existing customers.

Visual Design: The Finer Design Details 

If an Aston Martin car is the epitome of classic, British style then the brands website manages to successfully mirror this in the finer design details. 

There’s no stock photography anywhere on the website, instead each image is chosen with care to depict a pillar of the brand, a detail of a specific model or a reflection of the brands status and heritage. 

Whilst the homepage sticks to a predominantly dark colour scheme, feature pages provide a direct comparison with stark white space filled with imagery. 

The photography used across the website is of the highest quality and a mixture of coloured and black and white photographs help to further highlight the long-standing legacy and tradition of the brand. 

A custom cursor on the featured slider of the homepage, a circle with the word explore, not only adds a new dynamic to this section but is a feature born as a direct result of the websites key aim, encouraging exploration of the exclusive brand.

Mobile Optimisation

The Aston Martin website is just as good on-the-go as one of their cars. In fact, arguably certain aspects of their website work better on a mobile device than a desktop. 

The autoplay videos on the homepage are clearer and easier to absorb when converted and optimised for mobile whilst every image or piece of text has been appropriately adjusted to fit any screen size. 

The burger menu is easy to navigate and here users are able to select which model they want to explore with 3D mock-ups providing additional guidance throughout the navigation process. 

Experience the Status of an Aston Martin

Driving an Aston Martin isn’t simply about travelling from A to B. It’s not an activity of convenience or routine. It’s an experience to thrill and admire and the brands website directly reflects this. 

If the aim of the website is to leave feeling like you’ve experienced what it would be like to drive an Aston Martin, to understand the status and heritage and appreciate the speed and power the cars can provide, then it’s a website that meets its aims and more. 

As an iconic brand that has been revered for decades, there’s no need to use their website as a hard selling tool. Instead it’s a way to subtly showcase a constant in British luxury automobiles and invoke in visitors the satisfaction that driving an Aston Martin provides. 

In a nutshell, it does exactly what a website for such a symbolic and recognised luxury brand should do. 

If you want to create a website or an app for your brand that will inspire the feelings of status, exclusivity and quality that the Aston Martin website does then the KIJO team have the experience and knowledge to help you do exactly that, simply contact us today. 

Posted on by Kirk Thompson