A new information-rich website and expanded interactive customer portal have been launched by
Street Crane Co Ltd, which is based in Chapel-en-le-Frith. The company is renowned worldwide throughout engineering, manufacturing, materials handling and the supply chain, for its innovative modular approach to factory crane and hoist design and manufacture.
Gus Zona, Street Crane managing director, said: “As a company that prides itself on close collaboration with over 100 international distributors, our website serves as much more than an online brochure. It is increasingly the bedrock of our relationships with our export partners globally. Developing some of the most advanced and cost-effective factory lifting and handling cranes and hoists is usual business for us. However, our continuing success comes through giving global partners quick and efficient access to relevant processes including crane and hoist designs, technical documents, spare parts, test certificates and much more.”
Since the early days of cloud technology, Street has provided a customer portal. However, the old system offered only limited customisation options – such as a logo and theme colour for branding. There were few features to modify layouts, improve the interface, or tailor the user-experience beyond simple application access. It lacked interactive elements, dynamic content, responsive design, and integration with external visuals or APIs. Therefore, in addition to modernising the whole website experience, Street is also overhauling the customer portal. This is carrying the dynamic web theme into the portal to make the customer-experience seamless.
Lee Millar, one of Street’s team of in-house developers who has spent the last eight months bringing the project to fruition, said: “The new portal provides full control over layout, navigation, and styling. It delivers a visually rich, mobile-friendly, and role-personalised experience, while still maintaining secure authentication via Microsoft Entra (Azure AD).”
He added: “We have added a completely new ‘order dashboard’ module to the portal. This will make it easier for distributors to view all historical orders, track current order statuses and shipping details, access invoices and download documents related to specific orders. They will even be able to order spare parts and components from past orders using a speedy ‘buy again’ type function.”
The portal is also home to many other time-saving modules. Eazycrane, for example, allows distributors to quickly custom-build crane set-ups and generate quotes for their customers. The Street Crane Store, meanwhile, allows users to order standard products and spares with live availability and pricing. A technical support area allows easy logging and management of support tickets. Finally, SharePoint gives convenient access to manuals, test certificates, datasheets, and CAD models of Street Crane products. These modules will also get a new visual makeover along with some new planned new features in the pipeline.
Vicky Zona, a member of the project team leading the transition to the new website and portal, concluded: “The idea is to use this website as a template for future websites that will be tailored to each country market. The second website which will be rolled out, we hope quite quickly, will be focused on the USA and Canada and the Americas. Others will follow with translations to provide a truly unified experience globally.”