Spectra Energy Website

Objective:

Spectra Energy Corp, a FORTUNE 500 company, is one of North America’s leading pipeline and midstream companies. For nearly a century, Spectra Energy and its predecessor companies have developed critically important pipelines and related infrastructure connecting supply sources to premium markets. Spectra approached Squires & Company in 2015 to redesign their website. The company’s existing website was created in 2011. The site was not responsive, and because the content needs on the site had grown so much since its launch, it had evolved into a user experience that was disjointed and lacked brand consistency.

Spectra Energy’s primary goals for the site were to modernize the look and feel with a user interface and experience that was streamlined, intuitive and engaging. The company wanted to simplify the site architecture and navigation, resulting in fewer clicks to access the site’s 200+ pages. Use of the latest mobile and web technologies was of great importance, as was the integration of Spectra Energy Partners’ website.

The website used a proprietary content management system, so while Squires & Company typically fully integrates its site builds in either Kentico or WordPress CMS, our development team needed to take a different approach with the Spectra site and instead provide HTML templates for Spectra’s development team to implement within their CMS.

Execution

With a thorough review of the current Spectra Energy site complete, and the goals for the new site clearly defined, Squires & Company first reviewed the site architecture and made recommendations to streamline content and reduce the number of clicks required for the user to access pertinent information. Once approved, multiple design concepts were presented that all greatly enhanced the user experience and helped modernize the look and feel of the company to its investor, landowner, and potential employee audiences.

The selected layout transitioned seamlessly into responsive layouts for tablets and mobile devices. Upwards of 30 unique page templates were designed and developed in HTML, and then integrated into Spectra’s CMS by their IT team. Squires & Company also designed a development style guide to account for any unique design instances on the site – which helped reduce the template count and overall development costs.

The site contained dual investor relations sections for Spectra Energy and Spectra Energy Partners, and Squires & Company partnered with NASDAQ to integrate their content feeds with the HTML templates. The same was done for the Careers section of the site with PeopleFluent’s career listings and application system.

A robust interactive pipeline map was also thoughtfully designed and developed by the team at Squires & Company.

Throughout the process, Squires & Company utilized BrowserStack for compatibility testing on all templates, and was available throughout the content integration and launch process to assist Spectra’s internal IT team as needed.

Outcome

Post-launch, Spectra Energy boasted about its overhauled web experience that now presented the brand and messaging to its audiences in a professional and thoughtful manner. Each page presented the required content in an appropriate manner while maintaining consistency among the templates yet not being mundane from page to page. On the development side of things, the Spectra IT team was thrilled to have a template system that tied in so easily with their CMS. In early 2017, Spectra Energy was purchased by Enbridge, so the full website as designed may no longer be accessible.