Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance
The Situation
The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance is a unique non-profit organization funded by regional electric utility companies. It supports residential, commercial and industrial energy efficiency projects in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, promoting adoption of better materials, technologies and building practices. Due to the complexity of its relationships, projects and service offerings, the Alliance needed to clarify the needs of its key target audiences, understand how they interacted with the Alliance website, and restructure the site to serve them more effectively.
The Approach
Moderated one-on-one website usability tests were conducted in five markets to isolate opportunities to improve website content and structure. Live focus groups were held to understand the audiences' perspective on The Alliance and preferred ways to retrieve information. Solid State used the research to give the Alliance website graphical and structural updates. Important project highlights and recent news were repositioned on the home page, and prominent links were added to sector-specific projects and partner websites. The Alliance website can be viewed at www.nwalliance.org.
