Zapata is primarily a watersports company that manufactures hydroflight products.  Its signature product is the Flyboard, which allows users to fly over the water, like Iron Man, using the water pressure produced by a jet ski.  More recently, Zapata began developing ground breaking jet powered aircraft.  In 2016 Franky Zapata revealed a real life, jet powered hoverboard, called the Flyboard Air.  Already well known in the watersports world, videos and news about Flyboard Air exploded virally, launching the company into the personal aviation industry and getting the attention of media and new fans all around the world.  

Video walkthrough of www.zapata.com

As the Creative Director of Zapata's marketing and branding, one of my projects included a major overhaul of the company's website.  The new site was part of a larger company rebranding and repositioning.  Zapata had just changed its name and logo (from Zapata Racing), to reflect the companies expansion beyond watersports.  At that point there was a new Zapata logo that was designed, but not much else regarding brand identity.  I decided to use this project to develop Zapata's new look.  Zapata Racing's old aesthetic was too grounded in extreme sports and would not look serious enough for potential investors looking to spend millions to develop experimental aircraft.  My goal was to make a website that also would be the foundation of their new style guide. 

• Create a new website that encompassed the company's two areas of business: recreational watersports and experimental personal aviation.
   
• Develop a new brand style, including color palette, font selections, graphics, iconography and photo treatments.
   
• Provide an effective directory of distributors and rental centers around the world.
   
• Make Zapata's hydroflight products more accessible and less intimidating to new users.
   
• Add ecommerce to sell Zapata products directly online.
   
• Create better product info pages for their collection of hydroflyers, that offer compelling photos, videos and professional writing.
   
• Reinforce Zapata as the leading designer and manufacturer of hydroflight products.  Knock-off competitors were surfacing and eating into their market.
   
• Create new pages and content about all of their aircraft concepts.
   
• Provide better and more detailed information about Flyboard Air and EZ-Fly to satisfy an exploding interest from the media, causing a strain on staff.
   
• Better utilize a huge amount of videos featuring Zapata products, produced by business partners and fans.
   
• Create a knowledge base with tutorial videos about installing, using and repairing Zapata's products.
   
• Utilize more lifestyle photography and action shots of people using the product. 

My first step in any project like this is to study the competition and look for other companies that faced similar communications challenges.  Zapata is a very unique company and identifying other companies to compare it to was a challenge.  One of my initial conclusions was that 100% of all of Zapata's watersports customers had to have a jet ski to use their product.  That told me that me that 100% of their target audience had been successfully marketed to by personal watercraft brands.  To best understand our audience and what selling techniques work with them I did a deep dive into all the key jet ski manufacturer's marketing - SeaDoo, Yamaha, Kawasaki & Honda.  I compared how Zapata had been presenting its product online and how these leading manufactures did it.  

My findings were that other manufacturers offered a lot more information about their products online.  My conclusion was that anyone looking to purchase a premium product, like Zapata's, was expecting to find much more detailed info online.  Zapata's product pages were limited to one 3D animation of the product, a very uncompelling product description, followed by a redundant list of features.  Overall, there was a lack of detailed information, product shots, action shots and compelling selling points.  Lastly, there was a need to better educate new customers to the basics of hydroflight, like how does it work, what kind of jet ski do you need and is it hard to do and learn?  

Making better product pages became my first priority.  Putting together the assets and content was a big job that involved seeking out new photography, writing new product descriptions and creating compelling selling points for the key products.  I reached out to distributor partners to share photography and retouched all the selects to make them look like they came from one source.  To get more photos, I also took screen grabs from hi-res videos and retouched them.  I wrote all new copy for every product, with an emphasis on making the product more accessible to casual users.  

Flyboard Air & EZ-Fly Page Content Strategy

Using Google Analytics, I learned that these two pages were the most trafficked on the site. The public was very hungry for information about Flyboard Air and EZ-Fly.  A heavy amount of phone calls and email inquiries was taxing Zapata's small staff.  I spoke at length with the director of communications and director of the military business development to identify the questions that people were frequently asking. Dozens of stories were being written about Zapata on a weekly basis and I knew that the website would be important in shaping Zapata's image and story.  

In addition to informing the media and potential investors about Zapata's exciting air products I attempted to use the high traffic these ages were pages receiving to draw new customers to the company's primary business, hydroflight.  The contents of these pages were crafted to give me the opportunity to organically introduce the water recreational products.  

About 30-40% of the sites traffic was landing on the Flyboard Air's product page and most of that traffic was not going anywhere else.  By cross pollinating content to the company's primary business, these new pages met multiple important goals.  The media had a place to get official and scripted content that we could shape and it drew an increasing number of new users to pages about the company's water products.  

Motion Highlights

One of the things I like to do on websites is incorporate different types of auto playing videos.  It grabs users attention and is a great way to communicate to and inform your audience.  The video edit below highlights some uses of that on zapata.com.  In the water section I use some animated loops to illustrate how Zapata's hydroflight system works and how they connect to a jet ski.  On the Flyboard Air and EZ-Fly pages I use a series of video loops to answer a complicated question: How did this company go from making water toys to making aircraft?  By displaying playing videos of the water products next to the air products, users could see their similarities and figure out for themselves how these seemingly different machines work on very similar principles.  I find using vertical videos also to be very attention grabbing and the simple interactive element of playing them on mouse over makes them interesting and fun to play with.