Working with Scottish and Southern Energy

Portfolio_ Utilities_

Energy saving site to help customers reduce their energy usage and save money.

The Atlantic Forum for customers to discuss energy-related issues.

Website promoting SSEs home security product.

Selling Energy

Scottish and Southern Energy is the UK's 2nd largest energy supplier.

Their regional brands collectively provide energy to 9 million customers throughout the UK in a reliable and sustainable way.

While SSE still enjoy the benefits of maintaining local brands as they predated privatisation unlike most of their competitors. This is great in an offline world but a challenge in the online world where regionality is, in essence, an irrelevance.

Having won the SSE account we set about redesigning the website and devised a search engine optimisation strategy for each of the brands.

Regional Energy Websites

Scottish and Southern Energy is not your average energy supplier so an average website concept just wouldn’t do.

The concept we developed was based around two core principles:

The local, personal tone of the brand
Their strong green agenda

The creative we developed twinned a simple, clear interface with an animated background that changed according to the time of day. This illustrative, naturalistic approach delivered a friendly and environmentally aware message.

Developing the energy websites for SSE was a challenge that we relished. It was a challenge that involved working with them to implement a new content management system in the one of the UK’s largest companies, creating one site platform that could be tailored to suit each of the regional divisions of the business and making the site at least AA-level accessible.

In only around 6 months, these objectives were met and the sites launched. The sites have enjoyed considerable success and have since been added to with a series of product and service-specific sites developed hand in hand with SSE to support other aspects of their business.

The SSE energy supply websites now showcase a series of features that anticipate what the customer is looking for and deliver information in an efficient manner. Some of the features of the site include:

Bespoke systems integration
Content management system implementation
Analytics implementation and analysis

Natural Search

Our solution was to develop a strategy that focussed the SEO investment where it mattered most. Working closely with the client, we developed a programme of works that targeted the greatest areas of opportunities for growth amongst their 4 key regional sites.

This involved a detailed series of analytics reviews to ensure our works were fully focused on driving the maximum traffic to the highest converting terms. We want sales – not just traffic and our programme was designed with this in mind.

Our redesign of the website ensured that all on-site factors were taken care of as part of our 'good hygiene' list. With this box ticked we set about completing the schedule of work for off-site SEO.

While the exact approach varied on the keywords and the brands, they all included a mix of article writing and syndication, online PR, blogging, directory submissions, social bookmarking and good old link building. And it worked…

Highlights so far:

Cost per acquisition is almost 1/10th of the original target amount.
SSE’s brands are now some of the highest ranking utilities on key terms.
The conversion rate for SEO is now 35% higher than before we began.
We have a delighted client!

We can do it for you too: If you dial us on 0141 229 1800(and ask for Garry Hamilton); If you send us a message; Or if you visit our studio

Show me the big guns

Would you like to know a little more about how we did what we did on this project?