Talquin Electric
Talquin Electric is a cooperative that provides water, electricity and wastewater utilities to four counties in the Florida panhandle. Their commitment to responding quickly to outages, its quality of customer care and its outreach in the community have been well-regarded.
Talquin’s website, however, was another story. With clumsy navigation, a confusing interface and aging functionality that did not display correctly on tablet and mobile devices, the website was in need of an overhaul.
Taproot started by auditing the existing website, breaking down each component into its most rudimentary elements.
How we delivered
Using this information, we constructed the site architecture from the ground-up, eliminating redundant navigation, repositioning critical material and creating an efficient hierarchy of content that emphasized the features that users are most likely to need.
Our goal was to make the website a destination, enabling members to find relevant information, thereby reducing the number of phone calls made to support staff.
Because design, usability and content should work as a cohesive whole, we placed equal emphasis on the interface, creating a striking, visually appealing layout that features custom photography of Talquin employees working in the field, easy-to-find entry points directing users to the most frequently used sections of the site, and carefully categorized, smartly segmented page structure that never leaves a visitor wondering where in the site they are, or where to go next.
The results
When comparing the raw data from the old website to the redesigned site during the same period of time from one year to the next, the bounce rate dropped from 75% to 15.79%.
That means more users were moving past the home page, digging further into the site rather than instantly leaving (i.e. “bouncing”) in frustration after not finding what they were looking for…and immediately calling customer service.
Likewise, pageviews per visit went from 27 to 242,746 over a three month period, and the time spent on the site, on average, increased by approximately 80%. Returning visitors during the same time period from one year to the next were up by nearly 50%.
Hurricane Hermine
Even Hurricane Hermine, which caused tremendous damage to the area’s infrastructure, didn’t phase the website’s uptime or performance in the slightest.
With traffic just after the storm increasing by about 23,000 times its normal average since the new site was launched, the site remained online and completely functional, enabling affected members to report their outages and locate the resources that enabled them to monitor repairs and view affected areas.
This put our work to the most difficult, and unfortunate, test we could imagine. In the end, the Talquin website performed flawlessly by providing much needed communication to the people who needed it most.
