USECON-Study: “Web-Forms used for Change of Electricity Supplier”
USECON made a study on the matter of “web-forms used for change of electricity supplier”
Change-forms by private electricity suppliers have been used as best practise examples – above all, the one by MeinAlpenStrom GmbH. With top grades in usability, functionality and transparency, the change form by MeinAlpenStrom is the easiest and best one to use.
Trend shows change of supplier done online
More and more customers use the opportunity to change online, which makes the User Experience of the change-form an even more important factor regarding good customer service. In the study “Tested web-forms for change of electricity supplier”, functionality, how easy they are found on the web and the layout and design of change-forms of private and public electricity suppliers were tested. Design and location of buttons and input boxes, wording and understandability of the descriptions, but also the logical and transparent navigation while filling in the form were part of the assessment criteria.
Using the website on the smartphone (mobile version) is also a very much needed criteria. “Also the process of changing the electricity supplier needs to be fast, service-oriented and customer friendly. The economy of electricity needs to adapt and meet their customers”, says Markus Murtinger, Usability expert at USECON.
Private providers as pioneers in user friendly change
The evaluation of the study was quite surprising: small providers design their web forms better than public ones. MeinAlpenStrom can convince with a good user navigation, easy handling and modern design. 8 out of 10 providers get only a “satisfying” or even worse in mobile user friendliness. Similar is the evaluation regarding the transparency: 6 out of 10 forms provide a good overview on navigation and help options when changing to another supplier.
A lot of catching up needs to be done in regards to accessibility, because most of the web-forms are not made to be used with screenreaders. Alongside MeinAlpenStrom only two more providers of web-forms dispose of this functionality.
More information on this study can be found in MeinAlpenStrom’s press release.
Do you have any questions to this study? Do not hesitate to contact Werner Jordan.
