At the core of AES Corporation is a clear mission: improving lives by accelerating a safer and greener energy future. As a global energy leader spanning four continents and 15 countries, AES needed its digital presence to reflect that ethos: credible to investors, accessible to the public, and consistent across every regional site under its brand.
AES's challenges spanned three interconnected areas: technical performance, structural complexity, and content experience.
Technical & Performance Debt
- A legacy homepage module was approaching end-of-life as Drupal core versions moved forward.
- A video-heavy homepage slows load times and drags down Core Web Vitals performance.
- No standing framework existed to monitor or maintain performance as the platform scaled.
Structural Complexity Across 17 Sites
- Seventeen distinct regional sites needed to operate under one consistent brand experience.
- Content creation was not centralized, risking fragmented or conflicting messaging.
- Technical support and maintenance overhead multiplied with every additional site instance.
Experience & Content Gaps
- The investor and homepage sections did not reflect AES's renewed renewable energy mission.
- Content hierarchy under-emphasized financial reporting relative to long-term corporate goals.
- Navigation made it difficult for visitors to find and stay engaged with key content.
OpenSense Labs presented AES with three strategic options; AES chose the most comprehensive path, a full platform transformation built on Drupal Multi-site. The approach was two-fold: modernize the technical foundation, and translate AES's visual direction into a faster, more focused Drupal experience. Migrating to Drupal 10 addressed the platform's underlying performance and support risk, while the homepage and investor experience were rebuilt around clarity, speed, and user intent.
Design-wise, AES's visual direction guided the homepage refresh, and OpenSense Labs translated that direction into reusable, responsive Drupal components — replacing a long-form autoplay video with lightweight templated pages. That change directly reduced load time, a key factor in both SEO and Core Web Vitals performance, while preserving a rich, modern entry point. These templated pages now surface projects, programs, press releases, and blog content in a consistent, fast-loading structure.
Replacing a heavy autoplay video with lightweight templated pages became one of the highest-leverage performance decisions in the refresh.
Development
On the development side, OpenSense Labs restructured the Global x Local section and refreshed the News section to drive engagement, while introducing a centralized content hub that standardized content creation across the Investor and Sustainability sections. Integrating SOLR search improved content discoverability across the platform. Security was hardened through region-specific access controls, closing gaps that had previously allowed unauthorized content changes and protecting data integrity across all 17 sites.
A Measurable Shift in Core Web Vitals, Google Search Console's Page Experience data for AES's mobile web properties tells the clearest performance story of the engagement. In the weeks following the platform's core technical changes, the number of URLs rated “Poor” and “Needs Improvement” steadily collapsed, while the count of URLs rated “Good” climbed, reaching 330 URLs, 0 Poor, and 0 Needs Improvement by the end of the reporting window. That's a full transition from a platform where the majority of tracked pages failed Core Web Vitals to one where every tracked page passes.
This shift wasn't accidental; it's the direct output of the technical decisions made earlier in the engagement: removing the heaviest front-end asset on the homepage (the autoplay video), consolidating content management through the centralized hub to reduce redundant page bloat, and rebuilding on Drupal 10 to shed the performance and security liabilities of the legacy module.
Strategically, OpenSense Labs realigned AES's digital presence with a focus on objectives, brand perception, and user engagement.
- Realignment with Objectives: Aligned digital presence with AES's overarching goals, ensuring a cohesive and impactful communication strategy throughout the website.
- Perception Improvement: Emphasised mission and future goals through clear messaging, fostering increased brand awareness and connection with the audience.
- Enhanced User Journey: Improved the user journey by making information easily accessible, creating interlinks, and ensuring a seamless experience for prolonged engagement.
- Clear Content Hierarchy: Established a clear content hierarchy by equally emphasising financial reports and long-term corporate objectives, enhancing the user's understanding and engagement.
Every metric below is scoped explicitly, sitewide, on the homepage, or investor pages so the results can be read and compared without ambiguity.
| Metric | Scope | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Core Web Vitals (Mobile) | AES tracked web properties | Moved from a majority of URLs rated Poor / Needs Improvement to 0 Poor, 0 Needs Improvement, 330 Good (100% passing) |
| Bounce Rate | Sitewide | 76.36% → 28.2% |
| Bounce Rate | Homepage | 54% reduction |
| Bounce Rate | Investor Pages | 31% reduction |
| Pages per Session | Sitewide | 1.76 → 2.89 |
| Session Duration | Sitewide | 0:49 → 1:20 (minutes: seconds) |
| Time on Page | Investor Pages | 30 seconds → 1:06 (minutes: seconds) |
Together, these results tell a single story: performance improvements at the platform level faster load times, full Core Web Vitals compliance, and a consolidated and secure content architecture are what made AES's engagement gains possible. Investors and visitors alike now spend more time, view more pages, and leave less often, because the underlying platform is faster, more stable, and easier to navigate.
Recognising the fundamental challenges, OpenSense Labs championed the shift to the dynamic Drupal Multi-site system. At the heart of this transition was the establishment of a 'content hub', crafted to deliver consistent and resonant messaging across vital pages.
Our vision then expanded towards optimising content visibility. The architecture was recalibrated, emphasising a structured content layout reminiscent of 'paragraphs'. Essential pages, notably the Investor and Sustainability segments, experienced comprehensive design enhancements.
By integrating the formidable SOLR search mechanism, we boosted the discoverability and allure of these pivotal sections. Concurrently, with a keen eye on security and compliance, we tailored data access, segmenting it by markets, fortifying data consistency and protection.
The pièce de résistance was the homepage refresh, meticulously aligned with AES's rejuvenated vision, instantly captivating the audience.
AES's transformation is a case study in what happens when performance is treated as a foundation, not an afterthought. If your Drupal platform is carrying similar technical debt slow-loading pages, inconsistent Core Web Vitals, aging modules approaching end-of-life OpenSense Labs' Platform Performance solution is built to find and fix exactly these issues before they cost you engagement, conversions, and search visibility.
Also, explore how we leveraged AI capabilities to address digital challenges for AES: "Scaling Global Content with AI: How OpenSense Labs Built AES's Intelligent Content Layer"
