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How has utility website design changed in response to shifts in consumer technology use during the pandemic? Charlie Stanley joined this episode to discuss trends in website redesigns to meet changing customer needs.
StoryConnect features interviews with marketers, communicators, CEOs and other leaders at cooperative and independent broadband companies, electric cooperatives and municipal power providers. The goal of the podcast is to help listeners discover ideas to shape their stories and connect with their customers. It is produced by Pioneer Utility Resources.
Intro:
A production of WordSouth and Pioneer Utility Resources.
StoryConnect: The Podcast, helping communicators discover ideas
to shape their stories and connect with their
customers.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
How has the way that consumers used technology during the
pandemic impacted the way that utilities are now redesigning
their websites?
That's what we're going to be talking about in this episode of
StoryConnect: The Podcast.
Hello, my name is Megan McKoy-Noe.
I'm one of the storytellers at WordSouth and Pioneer Utility
Resources and your host for this episode filling in for Andy
Johns. We're recording live at NRECA's Connect conference in
Seattle, Washington, with 500 of our closest co-op communicator
friends. As Andy Johns always says, any noise you might hear in
the background is ambiance or in this case, the sound of a very
large and much needed group hug.
I'm joined in this episode by Charlie Stanley.
Charlie is our web solutions manager at Pioneer, part of the
Pioneer Utility Resources family.
Charlie, thank you so much for joining us here today.
Charlie Stanley:
Absolutely. Thank you, Megan.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Now, Charlie, we were speaking a little while ago about some of
the ways that folks are using websites differently now in
2022. And you've seen that trickle down through the designs that
utilities are asking for and the different usability
features that they're asking for your team to include when
designing their websites.
Can you share a little bit about the changes that you've seen
and what folks maybe should be thinking about in the future?
Charlie Stanley:
Absolutely. Really, the trends have changed since the pandemic
has came and in a way, is
still here. The the co-op itself has seen trends change where
they want the
member to really be more empowered.
And with that has ensured that their home page really is made
for a task oriented member or site visitor.
Commonly, things that previously members would call in for to
complete a task.
Today, they're wanting to do that online.
They're wanting to do it after hours.
They're wanting to do it when you're short staffed or when
you're out of the office or when your office isn't open.
So with that in mind, taking the home page and really putting
those top tasks front and center and then also enabling those top
tasks to be completed online, has been at the center of the
design process.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Well, that sounds exciting.
I know some utilities have been closed for a while and have just
reopened over the past few months.
Some utilities never closed down at all.
They might have had maybe two or four weeks that they were
closed.
You know, so it's interesting to see what that little shift in
expectations has meant, even when we're ready and
willing for them to come into the office in person.
What are the big tasks?
You mentioned that there are certain tasks people want to do.
If you had to pick your top three, top four tasks that utilities
really see their members doing and wanting to have front and
center, what are those?
Charlie Stanley:
First and foremost is starting and stopping service.
Establishing a membership.
Most of the site visitors that are going to the site to start a
new membership, automatically assume that they can do that
online. So when you can't do it online, more often than not,
what was happening is the cooperative was leaving that
off of the website completely.
And the search history, the heat maps, the analytics studies,
all of that really showed that
the site visitor, the potential member of the cooperative, was
assuming that they can complete a
task that they weren't actually able to complete online at all.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
I love that. And I wouldn't have thought about using the search
history on your website to see what your members and your
consumers are trying to do.
Is that something you routinely do with your team before you
start redesigning a website?
Charlie Stanley:
We do. Whenever we have access to the analytics, whether that's
Google Analytics or in some cases we can do a full user
experience research study on the site.
And when we do that, we'll install a heat map.
The heat map can also be really valuable in seeing where site
visitors are going today.
Previously, a couple of years ago, one of the really popular
things on a website was a slide show.
And what the heat maps have shown us and focus groups, we've done
some virtual ones even during the pandemic.
What that showed us is that the slide show to the member or that
site visitor was often viewed more as
an advertisement, and they'd glaze over it.
They wouldn't see those slides and the heat map showed no
activity on the slide.
And essentially in talking with different members and site
visitors, they essentially started calling the slide show the
junk drawer of the website.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
No, we don't want to have junk drawers on our websites.
Now, you're mentioning a heat map and I have seen a heat map
before, but for folks who don't know what that is, could you
explain that?
Charlie Stanley:
Absolutely. It's an overlay that we put on.
On top of the website so that we can view where site visitors
are moving their mouse, where site visitors are touching on a
mobile device, and where site visitors are clicking or tapping
depending on the technology that they're using.
The more taps, the hotter that area gets meaning the screen will
turn red over links that are commonly clicked on
and the site remains clear or blue on activity where there's
just no activity at all.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
And this is something that you have to turn on.
It's not something like Google Analytics, which is available for
them to track at any time.
It's an active overlay that you have to add before you start
evaluating a website.
Charlie Stanley:
Correct. When we have a utility organization, opt in to our user
experience and
user research, we add that to their existing website and let it
sit for about 2 to 3 weeks to start gaining knowledge
and intelligence on their existing site.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
That's really exciting and a great thing to think about doing.
So often we are focused on what we want to share, our messages
with our members and our consumers.
We don't always remember to think about them first.
What are they coming to us for?
So I love the addition of a heat map and using search history.
You mentioned the first thing that folks are going to come to
your website to do is to start or stop service.
What other tasks seem to hit high?
Charlie Stanley:
Managing your accounts a big one.
And more often than not, what we found is that the utility
organization was linking to a third party bill
payment system, whether that's Meridian or Smart Hub or any of
those other integrations.
But they were linking over to it and just saying like Smart Hub.
And the challenge was a lot of the site visitors, especially new
members, didn't know what Smart Hub meant.
So even though there's bill stuffers going out, bill inserts and
other communication, it wasn't necessarily being tied
to pay my bill.
So changing some of the wording on the site and then seeing what
type of integrations, because the co-op often sends out so many
notices about scams and that type of information, someone that's
a little more tech savvy might see that scam notice and then see
they're being taken away from the utility's website and be
hesitant to enter their login details.
So if we can have them enter the login credentials on the
website itself, the site visitor, your member, feels more safe.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
That completely makes sense.
I would again, would not have thought about it from that
perspective.
So very cool.
Are there any other really big tasks or forms that you've seen
folks really start to ask to be able to take care of on the
website versus maybe a traditional PDF that they would have to
download.
Charlie Stanley:
The big one right now, and we're actually working with our
subsidiary ESG, is moving all of our
forms from PDF to online forms.
Traditionally, rebate forms were something that you had to fill
out manually.
Gosh, you can only imagine trying to read somebody's handwriting
on some of these, and I'm sure a handful of people listening have
tried to make their way through that handwriting.
But being able to create a form where you set conditional logic,
for example, making sure that there's ten digits in a phone
number and not letting somebody continue if they're missing a
digit.
It gently reminds them that that needs to be there.
Reminding them that they need to add the dot com to their email
address and there needs to be an @ symbol in their email address.
So those type of things will stop the site visitor from
potentially entering invalid information.
While it can't correct everything, it does look for some simple
things to make that process a bit easier.
And then also what you're able to do with that data, being able
to get a spreadsheet of everyone that filled out this particular
rebate form or say it's a youth scholarship program, being able
to get all of the participants
that have filled that out into one spreadsheet.
Previously we found the communicator or the energy efficiency
specialist, somebody within the cooperative was taking all of
those PDFs and manually typing them into a spreadsheet anyway.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
No, no. So not only are you meeting your consumer's expectations,
which we always talk about, you've got to meet your
members and consumers' expectations, but you're also making your
job at the utility easier.
So I love that.
One of the other things that I've really noticed you and your
team at Powerful doing on website redesigns is focusing on data
visualization, taking some very complicated information and
making it much easier for folks to understand.
Instead of expecting them to read, you show them the most
important information, and it just makes it a much easier
experience. Can you talk a little bit about the trends that
you've seen for data visualization, the places where it's really
useful?
Charlie Stanley:
Absolutely. The biggest thing with data visualization and content
visualization is taking something that would normally be a wall
of words. And typically, as writers and communicators, we learn
to write in long form.
And when we're writing that way on the web, it's just different
behavior.
Somebody that's going to a website to complete a task does not
typically read long paragraphs.
So using more headings, using bullet points rather than
sentences, shorter statements that somebody can read is a high
touch approach to kind of cleaning up some of that content.
But you can take it a step further and tell your story through
content visualization, using iconography, typography,
different colors and ways to box that content into short
statements.
And even using what we call micro animations for numbers where
it shows that number kind of spinning up to the final count.
What that does is it engages the site visitor.
It gets their eyes on that particular topic.
And what we've seen with that is that a page that was previously
a wall of words would have an average average spend of
about 30 seconds on that page before somebody exited that page.
With data visualization, the same content for one of our
members, we're seeing about 4 to 5 minutes.
So you're seeing 8 to 10 times the amount of time spent for
actually four less words, which means they're actually
engaging in the content.
They're reading it.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
You know, we talk about the importance of editing your story, and
it's hard.
We love our words.
We really do. But it really impacts how long folks are staying
with you and how powerful your story can be.
So those are just wonderful points to share.
Are there any other trends, anything else that you think folks
at utilities considering a website redesign things that they
should keep in mind as they start the process?
Charlie Stanley:
Looking at your content and what tools can be implemented to make
that content more efficient, whether you're posting jobs on your
website, how that can be more dynamic content that comes and
goes.
Events that are put on your website, what type of tool you have
implemented so that you can have more of a proactive approach
versus reactive approach with your events, whether it's an
annual meeting, monthly board meetings, scholarship deadlines,
anything like that.
Being able to have that drop off your website once the event is
over will create more credibility.
Because what often happens is if those events are on the website
as upcoming events, once they're over, it discredits the
organization as a whole and discredits the website as something
that's outdated.
Megan McKoy-Noe:
Now, old news is old news.
You don't want that on your website anymore.
That's a wonderful point.
Well, thank you, Charlie, so much for sharing your insights with
our family of utility pioneers.
He is Charlie Stanley.
He is the web solution manager at Powerful, part of the Pioneer
Utility Resources family.
And I'm your host, Megan McKoy-Noe at WordSouth and Pioneer
Utility Resources.
Until we talk again, keep telling your story.
Outro:
StoryConnect is produced by WordSouth and Pioneer Utility
Resources.
Both companies are built to share your story.
Our associate producer is Sarah Wootten.
StoryConnect is engineered by Lucas Smith of Lucky Sound Studio.