Barrett-Jackson
Designing and rethinking high-stakes buying and selling experiences for one of the world’s most trusted automotive auction brands.
This engagement was structured from the outset as a multi-phase, long-term digital transformation of Barrett-Jackson’s digital ecosystem. The work was intentionally planned to span public-facing experiences and core software workflows, with design positioned as a foundational driver of how users discovered vehicles, consigned cars, registered to buy, and managed their participation over time.
Barrett-Jackson’s website served as both its primary marketing surface and the entry point into business-critical applications, making clarity, trust, and findability essential. While the brand carried significant prestige, the digital experience had fallen behind, creating friction across high-value user journeys at a moment when the business needed its platform to operate at the same level as its reputation.
Generative Research
Product & UX Strategy
UX & UI Design
Design System & Interaction Patterns
Brand & Visual Direction
Video Editing
Scope
Role & Ownership
I served as the lead UX and design partner for Barrett-Jackson’s marketing website, working closely with executive leadership and marketing stakeholders to redefine how the brand presented itself digitally and how users entered key business journeys.
My responsibility centered on shaping the end-to-end marketing experience, from information architecture and content strategy to UX and visual design. The site needed to function not only as a brand showcase, but as the primary entry point into high-stakes actions such as consigning a vehicle or registering to bid, making clarity, trust, and narrative flow essential.
I led stakeholder alignment across marketing and adjacent teams, translating business goals into a cohesive site structure and page-level storytelling. This included defining navigation, restructuring content hierarchies, and directing UX-driven messaging that guided users naturally toward next steps without overwhelming them.
I also directed design execution across UX and UI, coordinating supporting designers and collaborating with engineering to ensure the marketing experience was cohesive, performant, and extensible as the platform continued to evolve.
The Real Problem
The issue wasn’t incremental usability. It was a fundamental mismatch between Barrett-Jackson’s brand in the real world and its digital presence.
In person, the auction experience is premium, high-energy, and trusted at the highest level of the automotive world. Online, the website failed to reflect that equity. The visual design felt dated, the structure lacked clarity, and the overall experience did not communicate the scale, quality, or authority of the brand.
From a UX standpoint, the site functioned more like a content-heavy blog than a modern marketing platform. Navigation had grown overly complex, findability suffered, and users struggled to locate vehicles, understand offerings, or confidently take next steps. This created friction at the exact moment when the website needed to establish trust, showcase inventory, and guide users into core actions.
What Mattered Most
Visually, the digital experience needed to carry the same energy and authority as the in-person auction without redefining the brand itself. The logo and core visual language were preserved, with emphasis on translating the excitement, contrast, and premium feel of the live event into a modern digital presence rather than reinventing it.
From a UX standpoint, findability was the top priority. Buyers and sellers needed to locate vehicles and vehicle details quickly and confidently, particularly given a demographic that skewed older and valued clarity over novelty. The site needed to feel intuitive, direct, and easy to navigate without sacrificing depth.
Equally important was surfacing critical auction information. Upcoming auction dates, registration deadlines for consigning and bidding, and event-specific details had to be immediately accessible and clearly presented. The website needed to function as a reliable source of truth, helping users understand what was happening, when it was happening, and what actions they needed to take.
Key Decisions
To address these priorities, the work focused on a small number of structural decisions that reshaped how users navigated the site and initiated key actions.
The first decision was to reorganize the information architecture around clear user intent. Buying, selling, auction schedules, and past results were each grouped into distinct, easy-to-understand sections, replacing a fragmented navigation that had grown difficult to scan. This significantly reduced cognitive load and made it easier for users to understand where to go based on what they wanted to do.
Vehicle discovery and auction information were elevated as primary entry points. Finding cars, viewing car details, and accessing upcoming auction dates and deadlines were surfaced prominently in both navigation and homepage placement, ensuring these high-interest actions were immediately accessible rather than buried in secondary pages.
Finally, the homepage was redesigned to actively guide users into these journeys. Rather than functioning as a static brand page, it became a launch point for core actions such as finding a car, exploring upcoming auctions, registering to participate, or reviewing past results. These pathways were refined and revisited to balance clarity, prominence, and brand presence while supporting the business’s most important goals.
The Work
Several key areas of the marketing site best illustrate these decisions in practice.
The Auction Details page became one of the most critical destinations on the site. It was designed to function as a comprehensive hub for each event, bringing together auction dates, schedules, and the docket for viewing available vehicles, alongside actions such as purchasing tickets, accessing VIP experiences, and finding travel and sponsor information. This consolidation ensured users could understand and act on an auction without navigating across disconnected pages.
The homepage was redesigned to clearly surface what mattered most. The hero section highlighted the current auction with dates and immediate access to core actions, including viewing the docket, registering to bid or consign, and purchasing tickets. Below this, featured vehicles were prominently showcased to support browsing and discovery, reinforcing the site’s role as both a brand destination and an entry point into key journeys.
Outcome
The marketing redesign fundamentally reset how the Barrett-Jackson brand showed up digitally and how users engaged with the business online.
Information became easier to find, easier to understand, and easier to act on. Vehicles, auction details, and key dates were clearly surfaced, reducing friction for users who needed to make time-sensitive, high-confidence decisions. The site shifted from feeling dated and content-heavy to feeling intentional, premium, and aligned with the in-person auction experience.
The redesigned marketing experience also created a clearer, more confident entry point into core actions such as consigning a vehicle or registering to bid. Users were guided more naturally from exploration to participation, while internal teams gained a modern digital foundation that better supported customer management and ongoing operations.
Overall, the work resulted in a cohesive digital presence that matched the strength of the brand, improved usability for a broad audience, and established a durable platform for future growth.
