About

The Story behind the STAR Standard

Our team of trusted web experts explain the “magic behind the curtain” in creating memorable online experiences.

Transforming with the digital landscape:

• In the early 2000s community-owned utility organizations had essentially an online brochure. There were no standards, and the website was often an afterthought.
• Today, the website is often the primary source of communication. It is the first impression of the cooperative or utility organization. With that, it’s more important than the presentation of your lobby or your curb appeal. It has more traffic than those traditional areas of interaction. Today consumers want to:
  • Pay their bill
  • Manage their account
  • Get information about outages
  • Learn about rebate offerings
  • Read news
  • Get information on meeting dates and times
  • Lookup more obscure information

Putting People First

• The STAR Standard puts inclusivity, usability and human behavior into focus. It centers around the content on each page within a website and taking a hard examination of that content to see what value it brings to the site visitor.
• We advocate the importance of the overall content strategy being implemented. Far too often, a content curator focuses on the design of their content without taking into consideration the method that people retrieve that content varies greatly based on their backgrounds, physical or mental limitations, internet connection speed and the type of device they use to access that information.

Considering all kinds of site visitors

• Some site visitors don’t use navigation menus, they rely exclusively on search
• Others speak a language other than English as their primary language at home
• Site visitors using mobile devices should not have to “pinch and zoom” their way through content that was designed to be printed on paper. Responsive designs, allowing content to rearrange to fit the site visitors screen is more intentional and thoughtful when adding content to your website

A Different Approach

This standard came to life from our own passion of creating humanized experiences on the websites we build. A relentless approach to create content in a way that fits best for the site visitor and the device they use, their comfort level with technology as well as being considerate of their unique differences.