Carlton Thermal Systems (CTS) has spent thirty years supplying temperature sensors, probes, etch foil heaters and bespoke thermal parts to engineering firms and OEMs.
Almost none of that came across online.
Their website had aged, and the partner who built it was no longer able to support it. New business wasn't coming through it. They knew that much already, so they came to us with one ask. Audit the site, explain what's wrong, and say whether it was worth patching it up, or they needed to start again.
We started with the audit they asked for
We ran digital, UI/UX and competitor audits, which gave CTS a view of the business from the outside looking in. The site had real problems. Navigation, structure, the way products were presented and a platform that had drifted out of support underneath all of it. None of it, though, was the root cause.
The problem ran deeper than the website
The brand lacked clarity. The messaging did little to explain what CTS could do that a cheaper quote couldn't. Nor did the site speak to either of the two people who mattered here: the engineer specifying a system, and the buyer signing it off.
Little of this came as news to the CTS team. What they hadn't had before was the evidence, set out plainly by someone with no stake in defending the old decisions. So we worked out together what to tackle, and in what order.
A proposition first, then a brand to carry it
We wrote a value proposition and key messaging framework with the CTS team, built around the problems their customers arrive with rather than the products on the shelf. It landed on Intelligent Thermal Solutions, held up by expertise, innovation and service.
That gave us sector messaging for the markets CTS wanted to move into, medical and railway among them, and separate routes through the site for engineers and for procurement.
A new brand identity and design system followed. Logo, colour palette, type, photography. The brand book now keeps everything consistent, on screen and in print.
The website came last, and that was the point
With the strategy settled, we ran website workshops with the team and mapped how each audience actually moves through a site like this. Then we designed and built the new WordPress site around what we'd found.
The old structure followed the product catalogue, which grew a little every year and made sense mainly to people who already knew CTS. The new one leads with sectors and the questions buyers actually ask.
The sector-led structure is doing its job. Since launch, CTS has picked up enquiries from a rail industry contact they'd been trying to reach, and from NASA.
What began as a website audit became a brand, a messaging framework and a rebuilt website. Every step of that was a decision CTS made with us, once the evidence was in front of them.
Engineers reach technical detail quickly. Buyers find the reassurance they need to take on a new supplier.
CTS has somewhere they could be proud to publish content and run campaigns from.
Send us the brief or the problem behind it.
