Cuerva: The new website, an inspiring platform

Cuerva, the energy company from Granada, is a family business with more than 80 years of experience and a global presence. They work in generating, distributing and retailing energy from renewable sources, and have been committed from the beginning to innovation, to take energy to the next level.

It’s been truly important and enjoyable for us to accompany them on their journey over the last few months. It all started with the reinvention of their brand identity to reflect their reality and potential. This led us to redesign their website so their digital presence would show what this new stage means for Cuerva. Ultimately, "redesign" was not quite enough... and we took their website to a new level.

BEYOND REDESIGN: CUERVA’S WEBSITE EXPERIENCE

To make the first decisions we went back, as we always do, to the brand strategy and the business objective they set for their website, their positioning in the industry. We made them tangible by defining a distinct purpose for the digital experience. Two purposes, in fact: Outreach, with the aim of helping the user, from their expertise, in the transition to the new energy consumption model; and community, the website as the core of the Cuerva Community, to make it grow.

From there, we began to think about the website in a different way, transcending the corporate sphere. So we looked for a concept that would give us some traction: Cuerva's website would be an inspirational platform to bring energy to the next level. Clearly, this went (far) beyond redesign. We transformed it visually, we transformed the content and the navigation and, in short, we created a new website experience to let that inspiration flow.

SIMPLIFYING NAVIGATION, IMPROVING THE EXPERIENCE

During our research stage, we acquired a fundamental insight to develop this new web experience: The current tendency in tech sites to simplify the information and the navigation. To do this, we deconstructed the section structure and proposed content blocks that should be present in each section. In a workshop with the Cuerva team, we defined what was relevant and, taking into account their inputs, we created the final architecture of the website.

With a focus on outreach and community building, we saw the need to incorporate a new section with stories, interviews with specialists, tutorials, innovation, projects... And so the new Community section was born.

LET THE DATA SPEAK

A very powerful idea but... how does this translate into a website? We showed real data in a really visual way and created content about Cuerva's projects, their impact and relevant trends in the energy sector.

Beyond the new content organization, we felt that in order to maintain coherence, the website, the renewed core of its digital communication, should not just tell what Cuerva is, but rather had to show what Cuerva does.

VISUAL SYSTEM

The brand's visual universe, its colors (yellow, gray and white), the typography, and its energetic and dynamic photographic style, were key to bringing out the best in this new website experience. That’s why an important part of the process was the adaptation of this universe to Cuerva's new digital product while maintaining its essence. We worked with our Design System, which allows us to create more consistent interfaces, improve workflows between different teams and optimize time and resources to launch and iterate.

For Cuerva, the styles we defined in this Design System can be effortlessly shared between products without the need for intervention from the Tech or Design teams. Anyone connected to the brand can do this easily thanks to its Brand Center. Soon we’ll show you how this process has been and the final result, but that's a story for another day.

The use of Cuerva's own colors has a leading role in the new website. We use them in different percentages to communicate its two main sections: dark colors for the corporate part and light colors for the community part. In addition, we use yellow in a lower percentage (15%) for calls to action.

THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND THIS INSPIRING PLATFORM

All the components within the Design System are easily and quickly delivered to the development team, allowing for agile programming thanks to the shared nomenclature.

Another key element was the total customization and integration with Cuerva's marketing tools and CRM. This way, we have data to measure the content's performance and the effectiveness of the website's different sections, and make the necessary adjustments. In addition, all of this is managed seamlessly by Cuerva's Marketing team from HubSpot and, on our side, with DatoCMS.

RESULTS

And there was light. The new inspiring platform created to bring energy to the next level is already a reality. The project was streamlined and fast-paced, so we decided to launch the website in successive releases: First, we launched the homepage, a one-page scroll, then came the Services section, the Cuerva section, the I+P (Innovation and People) section, and finally, the Community site. This agile process allowed us to measure and adjust as necessary between releases.

In addition to easy navigation, photography is an essential element of Cuerva's online presence, as it was for its visual identity. Powerful photographs that capture our attention from the hero sections.

Another key element of this website, even more so than the images, are the context components that reinforce the concept of knowledge and the goal of showing what we do: company timeline, real data about the projects, graphics that simplify the information...

COMMUNITY

The focus on outreach and building community is also very present in the content, especially on the Community site. In this section, we’ve defined the content structure through categories, and we continue to actively participate through the co-creation of articles and interviews.

Cuerva's new platform is a growing project, and after these intense months we already feel part of their team. New needs are currently arising in their Marketing department and we continue to work hand in hand with them, sharing with enthusiasm this new stage. And we will continue by their side, always going one step further.