UX/UI Project

Solar Buyer’s Guide

 

The project: Building the reference site on energy management products beginning with apples-to-apples comparisons of solar panel system components.

Browse and compare
solar components

 

EnergySage is an online solar marketplace connecting homeowners and businesses with a pre-screened network of solar installers. Customers receive up to seven solar quotes that they can compare apples-to-apples.

We needed to build a tool for customers and installers to compare solar equipment (panels, inverters, and batteries) that would be extensible to additional energy products and categories in the future.

Background and Objectives

My Role

 

UX/UI Designer & Project Lead

  • Survey key stakeholders for business and user experience goals, create alignment on requirements for version 1 (v1)

  • Build the project charter / MRD and present to leadership for feedback and approval

  • Conduct user research

    • Interview consumers, installers, and manufacturers

    • Understand what users want to compare and what’s important to them

  • Conduct design research

    • Explore similar, successful platforms (functionality, UX/UI, communication)

    • Define system patterns & frameworks

    • Draft wireframes

  • Produce high fidelity designs that cover each part of the experience

Business Benefits & Key Features

 

Benefits to Our Audience

  • Help consumers learn, compare and choose technologies, products, and manufacturer brands that are right for them and feel more confident in conversations with installers

  • Help installers decide what to stock and how to quote on EnergySage

  • Help manufacturers to drive consumer preference and installer loyalty on EnergySage

Benefits to EnergySage

  • Enhance our trust and stature in the clean energy industry

  • Support SEO strategy

  • Increased satisfaction and loyalty in the marketplace

  • Engage manufacturers leading to investment in consumer demand generation on our platform

 

User Experience

  • SEO tuned category pages for organic discovery

  • Showcase manufacturer promotions

  • Simple comparison tools 

  • Detailed manufacturer and product profile pages

Integration

  • Serve as a conversion funnel into the Marketplace

  • Pages are source of 'more details' in the ES Marketplace, linked to quoting tools for installers

  • Foundation for seamless solar project quoting

Design

 

Wireframes

Based on the required components and design research, I began mobile-first digital sketches of the various pages of the experience.

  • Product type search page

  • Product cards

  • Featured

  • Filters

 

Solving marketing strategy challenges

The marketing team had content and hierarchy requirements to boost SEO for these pages. I worked with the marketing and engineering teams to ensure we didn’t run into scope-creep for this first version of the Buyer’s Guide but got the benefits of our solid SEO strategy.

We sketched the changes on a white board, discussed tradeoffs, and emerged with a plan.

White board ideating on edits to the wireframes to ensure SEO solutions are included

White board ideating on edits to the wireframes to ensure SEO solutions are included

 

Explorations of high-fidelity product cards

The amount of information stakeholders requested I include on this “snapshot” of the product would be too much.

  • Panel name and wattage

  • Image and manufacturer logo

  • EnergySage rating and reviews

  • Promotion if applicable

  • Model, warranty, country of manufacture

 

Comparison UI

Filters were chosen based on our access to data about the panels and preferences learned from user research. The team and I eliminated the amount of content on the product cards to provide a cleaner snapshot.

Users needed to be able to:

  • View component details on separate page

  • Compare multiple options side-by-side

Outcomes

 

SEO & Site Traffic changes

  • Google search ranking position for search phrase “solar panels” moved EnergySage from 13th place to 4th place

  • Steady, ongoing increase in entrances and new users

  • Significant increase in entrances and users per week

  • Increase in leads per month/conversions to Marketplace