APA Group

APA's digital presence had grown organically, not strategically. Navigation was cluttered, content quality was inconsistent, and six fundamentally different audiences were expected to find their way through a single undifferentiated experience. 36% of content scored as hard to read. 22% of pages had fewer than 200 words. The careers section averaged just 20 seconds of engagement.

The brief was not just to improve usability. It was to reposition APA digitally: from another utility website to a confident, modern platform for a national energy brand.

The project began with an immersive discovery phase: 12+ stakeholder interviews, internal surveys, a heuristic evaluation, and in- and out-of-category benchmarking. This surfaced six strategic focus areas: document management, culture and recruitment, community engagement, investor information, emergency communications, and explaining where APA operates and what it does.

Six personas were developed and journey-mapped to anchor every design decision in real user needs. A full content audit assessed readability, engagement, and document inventory across the estate, driving a rigorous clean-up before restructuring began.

The result was a complete transformation from a cluttered, organically grown site into a clear, confident, and strategically structured platform. Easier to navigate, easier to read, and easier to act on. Comparing user surveys from December 2023 to December 2024, the gains were significant.

The critical shift was reframing "improve the website" as "understand and serve six fundamentally different audiences within one coherent experience." Leading the team through deep discovery, validated architecture, usability testing, and a systems-first design approach ensured every decision traced back to a real user need and built alignment across a complex stakeholder landscape.