UX Research and Design Strategy for MasterCraft's Website Redesign - Datmos

Datmos led the UX research, information architecture, and UX/UI design for MasterCraft's website redesign - bringing a research-led, data-informed design process to one of the most recognized names in performance towboats.

MasterCraft sells through two very different audiences: end consumers researching and configuring their ideal boat, and B2B dealers managing orders, accessing product resources, and quoting configurations. Designing a single digital experience that serves both groups clearly - without friction or confusion between the two journeys - was the core challenge Datmos was brought in to solve.

The project was delivered under budget, confirmed by Krista Schipner, Vice President of Marketing at MasterCraft.

Services

User Experience Research
User Experience | UX Design
User Interface | UI Design

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Client

MasterCraft is a premium manufacturer in the marine industry, specializing in high-performance towboats for water sports such as wakeboarding, wakesurfing, and waterskiing. The brand targets affluent consumers, boating enthusiasts, and professional athletes, while also serving a network of authorized B2B dealers. Positioned at the high end of the market, MasterCraft focuses on innovation, craftsmanship, and customized experiences for customers seeking performance, luxury, and lifestyle on the water.

Challenge

Designing One Experience That Serves Both Consumers and Dealers Without Compromise

MasterCraft's digital presence needed to work for 2 audiences with fundamentally different goals. End consumers come to the site to discover models, compare features, explore lifestyle content, and ultimately build their ideal boat through the Design-A-Boat configurator. Dealers come to the same site needing efficient access to product specifications, ordering tools, pricing resources, and brand assets.

The existing site handled this by blending the two audiences into a single navigation and content structure - which meant neither group got a clear, frictionless path to what they needed. The result was a digital experience that undersold MasterCraft's premium positioning and underperformed on both consumer conversion and dealer efficiency.

Datmos was engaged to redesign the UX architecture and visual design from the ground up, with a research-led process that would put real user behavior, not assumptions, at the center of every design decision.

Approach

Research-First Design, Grounded in User Data and Brand Positioning

Datmos began the engagement with structured UX research, not a design brief. Before a single wireframe was sketched, the team conducted user research to understand how MasterCraft's consumer and dealer audiences actually navigated the existing site, where they encountered friction, and what they needed to accomplish their goals efficiently.

From that research, Datmos built distinct digital personas and user journey maps for each audience type. These became the foundation for every information architecture, navigation, and content hierarchy decision made throughout the project - ensuring that design choices were traceable back to real user data rather than aesthetic preference or internal assumptions.

This research-to-design methodology is a core part of how Datmos approaches digital experience work, and it is why the MasterCraft redesign could be described by the client's own VP of Marketing as applying a 'scientific approach to understand customer behavior, needs, and expectations.'

Information Architecture: How User Research Shaped Every Navigation and Discovery Decision

The information architecture work translated research findings into a structural blueprint for the new site. Key pain points identified in the research: including the blurred line between consumer and dealer content, the difficulty of comparing boat models across families, and the under-optimized mobile navigation, were prioritized and addressed systematically.

The resulting IA gives each audience a clearly signposted entry point and a logical path through the content most relevant to their goals. Consumers can move from model discovery to family comparison to individual boat detail to the Design-A-Boat configurator in a single, progressive journey. Dealers have a separate, dedicated navigation path that surfaces the tools and resources they need without routing them through consumer content.

Navigation Design: Separate, Clear Paths for Consumers and Dealers Across All Devices

The navigation system Datmos designed creates two distinct paths from the moment a user lands on the site. Consumer navigation prioritizes boat families and model discovery, using a typographic hierarchy that surfaces the most important decision points first, alongside concise boat descriptions and imagery for at-a-glance comparison.

Dealer navigation is separate, giving professional users direct access to the tools and content they need without passing through the consumer discovery flow. Both navigation experiences use a slide-in panel interface, consistent across desktop and mobile, ensuring the premium interaction feel of the site holds at every screen size.

Users can enter the boat hierarchy at the family level - for broad exploration - or navigate directly to a specific model detail page, reducing the number of clicks between intent and information for users who already know what they are looking for.

UX Design: Content-First Experiences That Move Users from Discovery to Decision

Datmos designed a content-first user experience built around the reality that MasterCraft boats are premium physical products whose value is best communicated through high-quality visual media. The UX framework uses large-format imagery, video modules, and tabbed content structures to give users an immersive research environment - approximating, as closely as a screen allows, the experience of seeing a MasterCraft boat in person.

Tabs allow consumers and dealers to access different content layers - specifications, features, lifestyle content, dealer-specific information - from the same page without navigating away, keeping engagement high and reducing abandonment at the research stage.

The experience performs equally on desktop and mobile, which was a specific design requirement for a brand whose audience frequently researches at boat shows and on dealer lots using mobile devices before converting on desktop.

Boat Configurator UX: A Six-Step Design-A-Boat Flow Built for Mobile and Desktop

Datmos redesigned the configurator UX with a structured six-step flow that breaks a complex customization decision into digestible phases, reducing cognitive load and improving completion rates. The redesigned experience includes:

Live preview: Users see real-time visual updates as they make customization choices, maintaining engagement throughout the process
Save and share: Users can save their configuration, take snapshots, and share designs - extending the reach of each session and enabling conversations between consumers and dealers
Specification summary: A persistent, accessible selection summary lets users review and revise choices at any point without losing progress
Dealer version: A separate configurator interface was designed specifically for dealer ordering workflows - distinct from the consumer experience and optimized for professional purchasing

Product Page Design: Communicating Premium Quality Through Media-Led Storytelling

MasterCraft's product pages face a fundamental communication challenge: the brand's boats are premium physical products whose quality is experienced on the water. Datmos addressed this through a media-led page design that uses lifestyle video, high-resolution photography, and layered feature content to give prospective buyers a visceral sense of the product before they ever visit a dealer.

Each boat model page is built from the shared component library, ensuring visual and structural consistency across the lineup while allowing each page to tell a distinct story - reflecting the different audiences, use cases, and personalities within MasterCraft's product range.

Design System: A Modular Component Library Built for Long-Term Marketing Independence

Datmos delivered a comprehensive, modular design system as a core output of the project - not just final design files, but a reusable component library that the MasterCraft team can use to build new model pages, campaign pages, and brand content independently, without returning to a design agency for every update.

The system was built for scalability. As MasterCraft launches new boat models or expands into new market segments, the existing component library gives the team a structured, consistent framework to work within maintaining brand coherence across the site over time.

Datmos's execution of the redesign of MasterCraft.com was exceptional. Their team demonstrated outstanding thoroughness, proactivity, and creativity, all while deeply understanding our brand and customers. Beyond front-end design, Datmos applied a scientific approach to understand customer behavior, needs, and expectations, seamlessly blending logic with creativity. They struck the perfect balance by delivering elite functionality while visually representing the MasterCraft lifestyle. Throughout the project, they communicated milestones transparently and managed to come in under budget. Working with Datmos was truly a pleasure.

Krista Schipner, Vice President of Marketing, Mastercraft

Results

The MasterCraft website redesign was delivered under the agreed project budget. This was confirmed directly by Krista Schipner, Vice President of Marketing at MasterCraft.

Datmos and MasterCraft have a continued partnership, with an ongoing Customer Success and optimization engagement following the redesign launch.

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UX Research & Design Strategy for a High-Performance Website Redesign