Web Design for Aberdeen's Energy and Engineering Firms
You have spent years building genuine technical depth. Your website should make that obvious in ten seconds, to someone who is not an engineer.
Your expertise is not the problem. Explaining it is.
Most engineering websites are written by engineers. That is meant as a compliment about the accuracy and a warning about everything else.
The capability is all there. The track record, the certifications, the project history. But it arrives as a wall of specification, written for someone who already understands the discipline, and the person actually making the decision often does not.
They might be a procurement lead. A commercial manager. Someone at an operator scoping a supplier list who has forty tabs open and eleven minutes. They are not assessing your technical merit on your website. They are deciding whether you look like a company worth a conversation.
That decision is made on clarity, credibility and design. Not on how much detail you managed to fit on the page. I build websites that get you into the room, and let your expertise do the rest once you are in it.
I would recommend her to any technical business that needs to be understood by non-specialists without being dumbed down.
I came out of your industry
Before this, I spent five years as a Design Engineer in oil & gas. I have qualifications in both Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering and a Modern Apprenticeship in Engineering Drawing behind that.
Which means you do not have to start by explaining what you do. I can read a capability statement, follow a technical scope, and understand the difference between what you actually deliver and what your competitors claim to. That is usually the first two meetings saved.
It also means I know how this industry buys. Long cycles, small networks, reputation doing most of the heavy lifting, and a website whose job is to confirm what someone has already been told about you rather than convince a stranger from cold.
Design that ignores that gets the tone wrong. It looks like a consumer brand and reads as unserious to exactly the people you need.
Positioning that reflects where the market actually is
What's included in every project
Technical copywriting, written by me
This is the part that matters most on this kind of site, and the part almost every designer leaves to you.
I interview you or your technical lead, then write the whole site. Service pages, capability descriptions, project summaries, the lot. The aim is copy that a commercial decision-maker understands on the first read and that your own engineers will not wince at. Both, not one.
You will review everything for technical accuracy. I will not publish a claim about your capability that you have not signed off.
Design that works on a phone in a car park
Your visitors are not browsing at leisure. They are between meetings, offshore rotation, or in a car park before a site visit. The mobile version of your site is not a scaled-down afterthought, it is the version most people will actually see.
I design mobile separately and deliberately. Stripped of anything decorative, fast to load, with the enquiry route never more than a thumb away.
SEO foundations and page speed
Engineering sites are heavy. Vessel photography, facility shots, drone footage, technical diagrams. Left unoptimised, that is what makes a site crawl on a mobile connection, and page speed is now a ranking factor as well as a conversion one.
Every image is converted, compressed and given fixed dimensions so nothing jumps around while the page loads. Page titles, meta descriptions, heading structure and site architecture are all set up properly before launch, not retrofitted later.
Strategy before any of it
Before a page is designed, I map who you are actually trying to reach, what they need to believe, and what each page has to do to move them toward an enquiry. Everything after that follows from it.
Things like branding, email marketing, e-commerce, in-depth SEO and keyword pages can all be added onto your package.
What this isn't
It is not a template with your logo dropped into it. Those exist, they are cheap, and for a business selling something simple they can be the right call. For a firm bidding on contracts worth six figures, they are a false economy.
It is also not a large agency engagement. You will not be handed to a junior after the pitch, and you will not spend three weeks waiting on an account manager to relay a question. You work directly with me from the first call to launch, which is faster and considerably less frustrating.
The trade-off is honest: I take on a limited number of projects at a time, so there is sometimes a wait to start.
Who I work with
Subsea and inspection specialists. Decommissioning consultancies. Well services and integrity firms. Carbon capture, hydrogen and offshore wind developers. Engineering design consultancies, fabricators, and the technical recruitment firms that serve all of them.
The common thread is not the discipline. It is that you sell something complicated to a small number of clients, each engagement is worth a lot, and the gap between how good you are and how good you look on screen has become embarrassing.
Firms setting up for the first time are very welcome. If you have just left a major and are building something of your own, the naming, brand and website are a good problem to solve early, while the decisions are still cheap to make.
How it works
01. We talk
You tell me what you do, who buys it, and what is not working. I ask a lot of questions. By the end we will both know if this is a fit.
02. strategy & Structure
I map every page, the messaging, and the route from landing on the site to getting in touch.
03. Copy and design together
I write and design in parallel so the finished pages flow rather than feeling like text poured into boxes. You review the copy for technical accuracy as it goes.
04. You review
You see it come together in stages and feed back at every step. No reveal at the end and hoping for the best.
05. Launch & After
Domain, hosting, redirects, SEO checks, the lot. Then ongoing support so nothing falls over three weeks later.
What it costs
Most projects fall between £2,000 and £8,000, depending on the size of the site, the complexity of what you do, and whether you need branding alongside it.
That range is wide on purpose. I would rather have a real conversation about what you need than sell you a package that does not fit. After the first call you get a written proposal with a fixed price, so there is no ambiguity about scope or cost.
Payment plans are available on every project, including a six-month interest-free option.
We were setting up a specialist subsea corrosion company and needed a website designed and launched quickly. It had to make sense to people outside our field without losing technical credibility, and it had to work for Google.
My main concern with hiring a designer was having to explain our field from scratch. That was not the case. Gillian followed the technical detail from the first conversation and wrote the copy herself. It came back accurate. We updated a few pieces of terminology and that was it.
The process was well organised and we always knew where things stood. The site has been easy to maintain and edit since, and we have had Gillian back to make additions as the business has grown.
We refer clients to the website and link to it within our bids.
I would recommend her to any technical business that needs to be understood by non-specialists without being dumbed down.
FAQ:
Yes. I worked as a Design Engineer for five years and hold qualifications in Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering. I will still ask you a lot of questions, because your specialism is not mine, but you will not be starting from first principles.
I do. I interview you and anyone else I need to, write the full site, and you review everything for accuracy before it goes anywhere near a live page. Nothing gets published that you have not approved.
No, it is normal in this sector and it is a solvable copy problem. Anonymised project summaries, described capability, and client sectors rather than client names will do most of the work. I am happy to sign an NDA before we start.
Yes. If the identity is fixed, I design to it. If it is dated or was never properly defined, we can talk about a refresh, but it is not a requirement.
Most projects land between £2,000 and £8,000 for most projects. You will get a fixed-price proposal after our first call, so the number is settled before any work starts.
Six to eight weeks for most sites. Larger or more complex projects take longer and you will have a clear timeline before we begin.
Not necessarily. I will look at what you have and recommend what makes sense for where you are going. Usually WordPress, sometimes Shopify if there is a product side. Whatever we build, you will be able to update it yourself without code.
I work best with teams of roughly one to fifty people, where I can talk to the person who makes the decisions. Larger organisations with layered sign-off tend to be better served by an agency, and I will say so if that is you.
Yes. I am based here and know this market well, but I work with clients across the UK and projects run perfectly well remotely.
Let's talk about your website
If your site no longer reflects the quality of the work, or you are building something new and want it right from the start, I would like to hear about it.
Fill in the form and I will be in touch within 48 hours. If my schedule is full, I will tell you when the next spot opens rather than leaving you guessing.
I will be in touch shortly
Thank You
Whether you've got a couple of ideas, or you haven’t got a clue where to begin, at Gillian Sarah, I can give you support at every single step.
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