Powerhouse Wind

An easy but strategic website for Powerhouse Wind

In a nutshell

Powerhouse Wind needed to rethink their website and get it rebuilt. Their beautifully engineered Thin Air turbine needed to be brought centre-stage and messages crafted for their different target audiences. As an early-stage engineering business they didn’t have much money. At GoodSense we were able to create a quick-win website for this client ourselves, ensuring enough care could also be taken with website planning, so the website is strategically strong, and write effective sales copy and basic search optimisation.

What was needed

Powerhouse Wind wanted a website that focussed on what potential customers needed and helped to generate sales. They wanted to celebrate their beautiful Thin Air turbine and communicate its uniquely engineered benefits.

What they had was an old site, that didn’t scale to different screen sizes. The content focussed on the engineering achievement, relevant to the R&D stage of the business, but not suited to growing sales for a fully operational manufacturing business. The site also needed to support Powerhouse Wind’s growing network of sales and installation partners around the country and to grow as the business scales. The team wanted help with strategy and copy as well as a website building, for a very small budget.

How GoodSense helped

We started by asking questions; sending the Powerhouse Wind team a questionnaire that ranged from specific business needs to the type of questions potential customers asked them. This tapped into our clients’ knowledge in a time efficient way, giving us rich information to both plan the site and write effective copy for key pages. This is important because, although we know Powerhouse Wind quite well, having first worked with them in 2015, planning a website properly requires deep knowledge. We then applied our strategic marketing brains and experience to curate the important content into a website structure that would make it easy for the different target audience groups to research and buy the turbines. This process gives us a quick-win site navigation, menu structure and page layout tailored to the client and their target customers’ buying journey.

Website – before (left) and after (right)

It is a fast-track of a process in which we usually run a workshop with our clients to co-create a map of their user needs. That collaborative co-creation approach is better, giving richer insights from synthesising a range of viewpoints, but isn’t always needed for earlier stage businesses with relatively simple needs.

We then built the site, in an easy to edit platform, applying a simple, clean design treatment that let the product shine and kept costs down. This wouldn’t work for every business but is appropriate for the audience and product for Powerhouse Wind. It was also important to give enough detailed information on unique noise and efficiency benefits of the single-blade and supporting engineering.

We made the best possible use of current images and video, retained what content we could and wrote new, search engine optimised copy for key pages. We checked the site internally, set up Google Analytics, recommended a hosting company, oversaw the site go-live – and then handed the management back to Powerhouse Wind.

What this has meant for Powerhouse Wind

The business now has a website that makes it easier for their target audiences to find Powerhouse Wind and learn what they need to know about the Thin Air turbine. It gives a credible web presence to the business, important as they expand their network of sales channel partners. The platform will make it easy for the site to be adapted as the business grows and its needs change. Meanwhile the team can make their own edits and add News items easily. Over time, the site will help convert web visitors into enquiries, playing a role in building a sales pipeline.

Not only is the website an important sales tool for the Thin Air turbine but it has a small role to play in our transition to a zero carbon New Zealand. Small scale wind power will play a significant part in that future.

“Developing a new website with Goodsense was an extension of the previous positive experiences we have enjoyed with their team.

The foundation for me is that they have business values that reflect our own, and were prepared to develop a site that helps potential clients explore and understand what adopting and owning a wind turbine can do for them and how it fits their lifestyle. A hard sell site is not what suits potential clients, us or the product, and it made the site development project much more efficient that we were all able to agree on this quickly.

The proof of the project is traffic onto the new site is pleasingly well up on its predecessor, and we think we have a good platform to support developments we aim to implement in the business.”

Bill Currie, Director, Powerhouse Wind

The project demonstrates our flexible, practical and collaborative approach at GoodSense, working out what can be done for the budget and delivering that with a rigorous focus on the business and its target audiences’ needs. It is a marketing strategy-led and client-centric approach that gets results, time after time.

If you’re interested to apply some GoodSense to your marketing or website challenge – please get in touch.

If you want to affordably future-proof an off-grid lifestyle block, commercial or remote property, for $17,100 + GST + freight, you can order your Thin Air Turbine online today.