Where an off-the-shelf site stops being enough

Mindful Energy had started its website on one of the online platforms, and reached the point where what it needed next was precisely what the platform would not do. In 2023 the brokerage asked us to build the site properly, and to wire it into the system the business is actually run from. Some time afterwards, its owner came back to us for a second company.

Working together: Since 2023
Sector: Energy brokerage & recruitment
Project: Two websites, two integrations

This client is based in Hemel Hempstead

The starting point

A very ordinary place to arrive from

Ian White, who runs the business, had done what a great many owners do, and what we would encourage anybody to try. He had started building the website himself on one of the online platforms, got a good way into it, and then found the edges.

This is not a story about somebody being out of their depth. Those platforms are genuinely capable, and if your content fits one of their templates and a basic contact form is all you need, they are a perfectly reasonable answer. The difficulty is that their edges are invisible until you reach them. You do not find out what a platform will not do until you need it to do that particular thing, and by then you have built everything else around it.

We meet people at this point regularly. Some have spent an evening on it, some have spent months. The second group is the one worth mentioning, because the real cost was never the subscription. It was weeks of somebody's attention going into a job they do not do, and away from the one they are good at.

What it needed to do

More than a brochure with a contact form

Mindful Energy helps UK businesses get better gas and electricity contracts and use less of both. It works with a particular sort of client: independent schools through its ISBA partnership, care homes, hotels, and companies with more than one site to keep an eye on.

That gives a website more jobs than a brochure has. Four services that each need explaining on their own terms, rather than as a list. A quote request that collects enough to be useful without turning into a form nobody finishes. Six written case studies, because a broker is asking to be trusted with a contract and the evidence needs to be there to read. A mailing list people can actually join.

Not one of those is exotic. Together they are past the point where a template is still helping you.

The part that mattered most

The website feeds the business, not an inbox

What really settled the build was where all of it ends up. Ian runs Mindful Energy on HubSpot, so every quote request and every newsletter subscriber arrives there as a record, rather than as an email somebody has to read and retype.

That distinction sounds minor and it is not. An off-the-shelf form sends you a message. A form wired into your CRM starts something your systems already understand: the enquiry is attributable, the follow-up sits where the rest of your follow-ups sit, and nobody is copying names between two places on a Friday afternoon.

This is usually the honest answer to why a business outgrows a platform. It is rarely the design, and rarely the number of pages. It is the moment the website has to talk to the software the business actually runs on.

The second company

Then he came back for Mindful Recruits

After Mindful Energy launched, Ian commissioned a second site for another of his businesses. Mindful Recruits places procurement, accounting and finance people, with a specialism in energy management recruitment, and it does something we had not been asked for before: every successful placement is offered mindfulness training, retreats and ongoing sessions included.

A recruitment site has a requirement of its own, which is vacancies. We built it to run from Zoho Recruit, so roles are managed in the platform the agency works in and the website reflects what is there rather than being kept up to date twice.

There is not a great deal more to say about that build, and that is meant as a compliment to it. It has asked nothing of us since.

What we built

Two websites, and the systems behind them

Built rather than assembled

A site designed and developed around what Mindful Energy needed to do, instead of fitted into whichever template came closest.

Four services, explained separately

Procurement, consumption reduction, fixed price contracts and variable supply, each given the room to be understood on its own terms.

Six case studies that can be read

Written evidence for a business asking to be trusted with a contract, laid out to be read properly rather than skimmed past.

Quote requests into HubSpot

Enquiry forms that create a record in the CRM the business runs on, rather than an email somebody has to retype into it.

A mailing list that lands somewhere

Newsletter subscribers written into HubSpot alongside the enquiries, so the list is part of the system instead of sitting beside it.

Vacancies from Zoho Recruit

A second site for Mindful Recruits, with roles managed in the recruitment platform the agency already works in.

Nialto are a responsive, personable and well priced consultancy and we are really happy with the service they provided, and the high quality website they built for us. We would highly recommend Alan and the wider team at Nialto.

Ian White, Mindful Energy

Left in December 2023, not long after the first site launched.

Let's talk

Have you started building it yourself?

If you have begun a website on one of the online platforms and run into something it simply will not do, that is a very ordinary place to be. We would be glad to look at what you have and tell you honestly whether it wants finishing or replacing.

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An illustration of the kind of homepage we design and build