Delivering Ease of Use for the Sponsors of Energize Connecticut
As SVP of the Client Services team at Velir, I'm fortunate to work on numerous projects and to get to know the amazing clients behind our work. Our clients span many industries, and over the past few years, we've expanded our work within the utilities sector. I find this space exciting, because everyone has some connection to it. What I find the most interesting about this vertical though, is its growing focus on renewable energy, and energy-efficient solutions.
While every client is unique, there are common challenges that a website redesign solves — updating the look and feel, improving the findability of content, and creating clear pathways through a site. When the Sponsors of Energize Connecticut reached out to us about a redesign, we found an immediate connection to those challenges and started thinking about ways to solve them.
The Energize Connecticut initiative is dedicated to bringing energy solutions to the people and businesses of Connecticut so that they can make the most of programs available to them. The goal of the redesign of energizect.com was to sharpen the overall usability of the site, ensuring audiences have clear pathways to find content, provide a modern, mobile-friendly look and feel, and deliver updated search feature to help users quickly find content on the website.
Working with the Sponsors of Energize Connecticut and their strategy firm, we identified three core pillars to guide our website redesign effort:
- Show users how to be more energy-efficient
- Help users quickly search for important content
- Allow users to easily learn more about Energize CT and get started on their journey with Energize Connecticut
The navigation was the most notable change we made to the site. We needed to remove the speed bumps that were hindering users from identifying as either residential or commercial audiences. With the old website, content was often duplicated in both residential and commercial sections or topics that covered both audiences were fragmented. The new user experience is topic and program-driven, allowing users to quickly drill into what's important to them, with commercial and residential options side by side later in their journeys.
Another key area we focused on was site search. The previous website had a basic search that listed out content, but it struggled with relevance and accuracy. During this redesign, we completely revamped the website's search experience to include facets, a sophisticated tagging strategy, and unique search tools for finding a contractor, distributor, retailer, or searching for rates. The new site search experience is fast, and also delivers meaningful results that help visitors quickly find the content they need.
We also wanted to draw attention to what the Sponsors of Energize CT offer and how to engage them on next steps. There is now a very clear item in the top utility navigation bar that users can click to quickly learn more about Energize CT. There is also a large promo front and center on the homepage with the call to action “Get Started”. These cues make it easy for users to begin their search for programs and solutions, driving conversions for the site's primary call to action.
Lastly, we also created SEO-optimized content for the website. Using keyword research and a detailed SEO strategy, our copywriters edited and wrote dozens of content pieces to further streamline the user journey.
The result of our work with Energize CT is a modern and easy-to-use website that has a fresh new look and works beautifully on mobile. Its content management system allows authors to quickly create new pages and will scale with Energize CT as their needs evolve.
It was a pleasure working with the Sponsors of Energize Connecticut and we're excited to keep evolving their website!