Our website helps to keep customers connected.

Following Equilibrium's successful launch of their website two years ago, Western Power subsequently developed a new brand and customer experience strategy, and tasked Equilibrium with updating the UX and UI design accordingly. We used this opportunity to undertake extensive user research with end-users and map out a digital strategy that aligns with the rapidly evolving needs of the business.

A Western Australian community asset

The Western Power website is accessed on a daily basis by a diverse user base ranging from mum's and dad's at home, through to small businesses and big industry. Our task was to build a website where it is possible to empower residential and business customers to intuitively “self-serve” online, and alleviate pressures on Western Power's call centre.

Western Power website

Developed for a wide range of audiences

Western Power's customers include the entire Perth and South West adult population, as well as all businesses in this region. Important users of the site include land developers, local councils, and electrical contractors. Extensive scoping was undertaken with virtually all areas of Western Power's business to formulate an initial strategy.

  • Residential

  • Business

  • Land Developers

  • Local Councils

  • Electrical Contractors

HeatmapPlanView

User research

Our UX team used several research methods to uncover customer pain points on the existing website, such as adding surveys, screen recording and heat map tracking on the existing website. We also performed 1-on-1 interviews with end-users and facilitated usability testing on both the existing and proposed website. We utilised specialist screen and face recording software to capture how users navigate and experience the website which helped to refine the proposed website solution.

Advanced power outage tracking

Another important part of the site's redevelopment was to improve the way end-users access information during planned and unplanned power outages. These are events that drive significant spikes in website traffic.

Extensive efforts were directed into the development of real-time power outage feeds featuring an interactive map. It is the first of its kind in WA, and allows users to track outages geographically as well as providing an estimation of when power will return.

Stakeholder engagement

Stakeholder engagement

Given the complex nature of Western Power's operations, we undertook extensive internal stakeholder engagement. We facilitated communication between departments and ensured the project was kept on track.

Reporting faulty streetlights

Reporting faulty streetlights

We developed an important tool to allow users to report damaged or faulty streetlights. Users can access and interact with a map which shows every streetlight on every street in Perth.

Robust infrastructure

Robust infrastructure

Extensive security and load balance testing was undertaken on the website independently by Equilibrium, Western Power, and IBM.

Balancing the load

The website on average receives hundreds of concurrent users. However, in a power outage situation the website can receive thousands of hits in a short space of time. Therefore, Equilibrium setup a sophisticated load balanced environment to ensure quick load times and stability during peak periods.

This was recently tested in a real-world large scale power outage situation with the site being hit with thousands of concurrent users within a space of 3 minutes. The peak in traffic was sustained over a period of 30 minutes, but the load balancing environment worked as intended and handled the traffic with ease.

Balancing the load
Normal
Outage

Growth

As well as developing a robust and powerful website, Equilibrium is responsible for driving traffic to the website through 'always-on' and periodic campaign paid search activity. We also developed digital executions for the 'Make the Safe Call' and 'Before anything risky, look 360' campaign.

Results

Since the website's launch, call centre enquiries have fallen 12% as a result of a self-serve strategy, which significantly alleviates pressures on staff resources. Since Equilibrium has taken over the search account, search activity has seen a 30.52% increase in paid search traffic resulting. Our campaigns have also achieved an impressive click-through-rate (CTR) of 21.39%.

%
fall in call centre enquiries
%
increase in paid search traffic
conversions
%
click-through-rate (CTR)

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