Backstop Advisory
Client
Backstop Advisory
Services
Website Design & Development, Photography, Video Production
Year
2026
Backstop Advisory is a specialist commercial advisory firm for energy projects, founded by three directors who had spent their careers on major offshore wind, oil and gas, hydro and construction programmes across Europe and Asia. They built the business around a simple observation: most projects cannot justify a full time commercial team from day one, yet the decisions made in those early phases are the ones that cost the most to unwind.
They came to us with a credibility problem rather than a traffic problem. The expertise was there, backed by work with TotalEnergies Renewables and ScottishPower Renewables on projects including East Anglia Three, but nothing online carried the weight of it.
Our work has included a complete brand presence for:
Website Design & Build: A new site structured around the three service lines, commercial due diligence and advisory, procurement strategy and negotiation, and contract and claims management.
Photography: A full team and headshot shoot in a Victorian warehouse daylight studio in Hackney, giving them a consistent library of portraits and working imagery.
Video Production: Interview led content with the directors, capturing how they talk about projects in their own words.
Proof and Credibility: A trusted by client banner, ISO 9001 and 14001 integrated management system badging, a case studies section and an Insights hub for their own commentary.
Brief
01
Looking as Senior as They Are
Backstop’s directors carry over 60 years of combined contract and commercial experience between them, most of it owner side on large multi contract EPCI packages. The brief was to build a digital presence that matched that seniority, something an investment director or a package manager at a major developer would take seriously within seconds of landing.
02
Explaining a Service That Sits Outside the Norm
Backstop are not a generalist consultancy and they are not a staffing agency. They embed deeply during critical phases and work on a lighter fractional basis the rest of the time. That flexibility is their biggest commercial advantage, and it was also the hardest thing to communicate. The site needed to make the model obvious without turning it into a jargon exercise.
03
A Platform They Could Grow Into
Beyond the core service pages, the site had to support experience listings, case studies, testimonials and an Insights feed, all editable by a small team with no developer on hand and no time to learn a complicated backend.
Our Approach
01
Clarity Over Decoration
In a sector where buyers are reading for substance, confidence comes from clear structure, generous space and language that gets to the point. Every page was written to answer the question a developer actually has, which is whether this team has done this exact thing before.
02
Modular CMS Design
Working with SoPhat Studio, we developed a design system consisting of more than 30 key templates, from custom post types for hotels, to city guides - allowing the Capsule team to manage diverse content – all within a single, intuitive backend. This created an immersive experience that felt alive rather than static.
03
Owning the People
For an advisory firm, the people are the product. We shot the directors in a natural light warehouse studio in London, chosen from a shortlist of five locations for the range of looks it could deliver in a single half day. The result is headshots and interview footage that feel like the firm itself, rigorous but personable, rather than stock corporate portraiture.
Challenges
01
Momentum Against a Live Opportunity
Partway through the project, Backstop flagged a business development opportunity that needed a live site sooner than the original timeline allowed. Rather than compress quality, we proposed a two stage delivery, launching the homepage, About Us and Services first, then following with the remaining service pages, case studies and Insights. They had something credible to point to when it mattered.
02
Confidentiality in a Sector That Does Not Overshare
Energy project work sits under NDAs, and the detail that would make the strongest case study is usually the detail Backstop cannot publish. We worked within that, building the proof around named clients, project names already in the public domain and testimonials from client side contract and package managers, so the site demonstrates the track record without putting a single client relationship at risk.
03
One Firm, Three Voices
A major obstacle for the group was a lack of actionable insight; their previous tracking was limited, making it nearly impossible to pinpoint where guests were dropping off in the booking funnel or to accurately measure marketing ROI. To achieve the 30% direct booking target, we had to engineer a flawless technical bridge between the user experience and a complex back-end stack. By implementing 100% booking tracking in GA4, we transformed the website from a brand touchpoint into a transparent revenue engine, giving the team the data-driven confidence to scale their European presence.
Conclusion
Backstop Advisory was built on the belief that projects deserve better access to genuine commercial expertise. That expertise was never in question. What was missing was a platform that made it visible to the investors, developers and package managers who need it.
By pairing a clear, confident website with photography and interview content shot around the people who do the work, we gave Backstop a presence that reflects the seniority of the team and the way they actually operate, deep in the detail when it counts, flexible when it does not.
The name refers to the support you want behind you when a claim is disputed or a decision cannot be reversed. The site now does the same job commercially, giving prospective clients something solid to look at long before the first conversation.
