Since 1953, Air Brake & Power Equipment has been in business selling and servicing industrial power equipment products. Today, the company is owned and operated by the family’s 4th generation. As a company with more than 70 years of history behind their name, they came to Wes Web seeking a website that communicated their experience and better showcased their products and services.
The original website Air Brake & Power came to us with had been self-built in Wix. The goal of our redesign was to create something more dynamic and visually engaging while improving technical items like website organization, the foundation for SEO, and just the overall user experience.
Establishing Trust In a Website Redesign Through the Website Hero
Air Brake & Power Equipment already has decades of experience and a very well-established reputation. We wanted website visitors to recognize that immediately.
As a part of the hero section of the homepage, we incorporated a brief introduction alongside quick company statistics that serve as trust signals. Visitors don’t have to dig through the website to understand the company’s experience or history. Some of its strongest credibility points are established within the first few sections and in a format that is easy to skim.
Putting Products & Services High on the Page To Serve Customers
At Wes Web, we like to build landing pages around the needs of the customer, not just around telling visitors who a company is. That’s why Air Brake & Power Equipment’s products and services are positioned prominently on the homepage, one of the first things visitors see when scrolling.
Seeing how Air Brake & Power can serve and not just what they do helps customers navigate quickly and easily to the product or service they’re looking for. This approach creates a clear path through the website with an easy user experience while also supporting stronger internal linking for SEO.
Highlighting Vendor Relationships Through Dynamic but Simple Design
Air Brake & Power Equipment made it clear to us that they have a fantastic relationship with many manufacturers whose products they sell and service, and they wanted that to be clear on their website. We wanted to make the logos for these vendors visible without a large overwhelming collection on the homepage.
A scrolling marquee was our solution to give a quick look at the manufacturers they work with, and we also then built a dedicated full page to display vendors and give them a permanent home on the website for those who want to explore deeper.
Setting Up WooCommerce For Style and Easy Client Editing
One of the biggest functional components of Air Brake & Power’s new website was a way to display their products. Our goal wasn’t just to create a visually appealing product page but to make sure the Air Brake & Power team could easily add and manage product listings themselves without disrupting the design or needing to understand confusing code.
Our web designers at Wes Web don’t believe in locking clients out of their own websites. We provide full access and ownership to our clients of their own websites, and part of that means also ensuring the editing experience isn’t full of red tape that makes it impossible to work with for those who are new to the website editing experience.
For Air Brake & Power, we kept the simple WooCommerce setup to maintain and add products on the backend with familiar fields for their team to update. Styling and presentation on the frontend is completely separate so that site visitors see a polished, custom-designed product page while the Air Brake & Power team gets a simple editing experience for behind the scenes details.
Refreshing the Existing Logo at the Client’s Request
This project also included a small refresh of Air Brake & Power Equipment’s existing logo. They asked us not to reinvent the entire brand but rather add some more personality and color than what was in their original black-and-white logo.
In the original logo, “est. 1953” was quite large and prominent, and it competed with the company name visually. We reduced the size to make sure Air Brake & Power’s name was the clear focus point of the logo. We also incorporated red into the design to make it pop. These were both subtle but impactful updates that helped the existing logo fit naturally into the new direction of the website without completely losing touch with the company’s already-established brand identity.
Original logo:
Refreshed logo:
A Website Redesign With a Bold but Balanced Visual Style
The website uses a strong black, white, and red color palette. We wanted the design to feel modern and “cool” without becoming too hard on the eyes. Red is used primarily as an accent to draw attention to important elements while using black and white with open space and even margins for balance.
We also incorporated subtle industrial patterns into backgrounds throughout the website, balancing patterns with imagery to add texture and dimension without being too distracting from the information visitors need to find to convert to a lead.
Accessibility is something Wes Web is also always thinking about in our visual design process. We regularly use WCAG-compliant color contrast checkers to evaluate color combinations and help to maintain readability.
The end result is a website that feels dynamic and memorable while still making it clear where information lives and where visitors should go next.
Bringing an Established Company Into Its Next Generation Through Website Redesign
Air Brake & Power Equipment didn’t need a website that made it look like a completely different company. It needed one that better represented the business it had already spent generations building.
The new website combines a stronger visual identity with better organization, an SEO-conscious structure, accessible design, prominent vendor relationships, and a customized WooCommerce experience that their team can continue managing themselves.
For a fourth-generation company with roots going back to 1953, the new website provides a more modern foundation for what’s next.
Is Your Long-Standing Business Ready For a Fresh, New Website?
A website redesign should do more than make your business look better online. It should make your products and services easier to find, your company easier to understand, and your website easier for your own team to manage. Contact Wes Web today to start your website redesign process.