DriveElectric

Transforming a traditional offline car leasing business with a vibrant new brand identity and a cutting-edge, digital-first platform.

DriveElectric is a leading supplier of leased Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the UK, offering electric car and van leasing since 2008, supported by outstanding technical and customer service.

Already recognised as a key player in EV adoption within the UK automotive and energy sectors, DriveElectric aimed to solidify their position as a leading expert, with a dedicated focus on EVs.

They also sought to transition their predominantly offline business into a future-proof online platform, allowing customers to effortlessly find the ideal EV and complete the entire ordering process online from start to finish.

Challenge

DriveElectric initially built their online platform using WordPress, which helped them get started quickly. However, as the business grew, the platform began to hold them back.

With the increasing number of EV models being released, keeping the website updated with the latest availability and pricing became a daunting task.
As they aimed to streamline the entire process from finding an EV to applying for finance into a fully online experience, they encountered numerous technical challenges that WordPress couldn't easily overcome.
The website faced significant performance issues, resulting in poor scores on Google's Core Web Vitals.

The business had always taken pride in leading the EV revolution. To maintain their edge, they knew they needed to keep innovating with new features and services. However, their current website was making this increasingly challenging.
In the early days, DriveElectric enjoyed a top spot on Google, but as competition rapidly grew, it had began to lose its strong position.

Solution

DriveElectric needed to act swiftly and couldn't afford to wait for a lengthy web development process for their new website platform to launch.

To address this urgency, they teamed up with Anything to create a strategic website roadmap.

A rapid yet seamless phased approach

The first phase focused on a "lift and shift" approach, transferring the existing website’s functionality to a new, modern platform built on a Headless CMS solution.

The primary goal was to ensure a smooth and rapid transition to a scalable and flexible platform without adding new features. This initial phase was successfully completed in just 3 months. Over the following 12 months, Anything continuously developed new features, rolling out updates regularly as they became available.

The headless CMS Prismic was used to manage content, offering a user-friendly interface and a quick onboarding process that made it easy for the growing team to get started.
To meet the tight initial launch deadline, the first phase EV models were initially managed through Prismic. However, within three months of the launch, management of these models, including pricing and special offers, was transitioned to Microsoft Dynamics to accommodate DriveElectric's scalability needs.
At the six-month mark, the final major piece of the puzzle was completed with the launch of a streamlined online finance process, fully integrated with DriveElectric's internal systems. This innovation enabled the entire journey, from selecting a car or van to obtaining finance approval, to be conducted online, allowing the business to scale rapidly.

The next major enhancement was enabling users to configure their EVs online instead of selecting from predefined options. To achieve this, we integrated with several third-party services to develop the DriveElectric car configurator. This tool allowed customers to choose from all available options, view a visualization of their chosen specification, and receive a custom monthly cost calculated in real-time.
DriveElectric partnered with E.ON Energy to market their EVs directly on the E.ON website. To facilitate this, Anything collaborated with the E.ON team to develop a straightforward API, enabling E.ON to display EV offers directly on their site. When customers clicked through to the DriveElectric website, visual adjustments were made to reinforce the E.ON partnership and ensure that the customer journey was tracked as an E.ON referral.

Sustainability

In addition to delivering a robust, scalable solution to meet DriveElectric's ambitious growth targets, we were committed to building a website with sustainability at its core. To align with this ethos, we transitioned from always-on dedicated servers to a serverless approach, significantly reducing the website's carbon footprint.

API Integrations

100%

Lighthouse SEO Score

97%

Lighthouse Accessibility Score

We partnered with Anything to revamp our outdated website, which was starting to show its age. We needed to unlock the advantages of the latest headless CMS technology to ensure an ultra-modern and fast experience for our website users.
Working with Anything has been brilliant from start to ongoing support. The team is like an extension of our internal team in many ways. From inception through build, launch, and ongoing maintenance and enhancements, we've been delighted with the levels of support and expertise provided. Moreover, they all seem like thoroughly good people, too. They are very easy to work with, and it has always felt like an open and honest, two-way dialogue to solve problems, just as it should be.

Richard Lawton
Head of Marketing & Communications, DriveElectric

We believe our customers deserve the right solutions without compromise

We delivered a high-performance, resilient, and scalable digital solution for DriveElectric, setting them on a path to sustained digital growth. By collaborating relentlessly with our customers and simplifying the complex, we get results together.

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DriveElectric

Challenge

Solution

Sustainability

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