Improving accessibility, improving UX

Utility website redesign lowers support costs and improves experience for all users.

At a glance

When a regional utility needed to improve accessibility and user experience (UX) across several customer-facing websites, they contacted us.

Customer challenge

Our client was facing potential fines over a lack of accessibility provisions for users with disabilities on several customer-facing websites. In preparing to make the required updates, they recognized a need to address several additional issues that were affecting the overall user experience, including:

• Lack of support for mobile devices

• Disjointed experiences among the utility’s various customer sites, causing confusion among customers as they moved between platforms and resulting in increased traffic to the company’s more costly customer service channels

• Ongoing site maintenance issues, including broken links, ineffective site search, outdated content, and thousands of pages with minimal views

Why they chose us

We worked with this utility in successfully completing more than 20 projects, which included a corporate intranet portal, a smart-meter communications platform, and a public awareness management system. Because our clients knew from experience that they could trust us to design and implement an effective solution with minimal disruption, we were the obvious choice for this project.

Value and benefits: “The Wins”

We updated our client’s customer-facing websites to meet the requirements of the WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standard, resulting in a significantly improved user experience for customers with disabilities and allowing our client to avoid fines. The new site is fully responsive for customers visiting from all devices — desktop, tablet, and smartphone.

We also implemented a robust content strategy that encompassed rewriting and replacing all content on the utility’s main customer website, resulting in:

• Reduced call volume to call center

• Lower ongoing support costs

• Lower costs for designing new or updated pages

• Improved search and overall customer experience

What started as an accessibility project to avoid fines evolved into a comprehensive UX solution that enables our client to better serve their customers while also lowering support costs.