Ameren Illinois Savings Website
Roles
Project Manager, Lead UX/UI Designer
Final Product
Overview
The Ameren Illinois Energy Efficiency Program serves more than 1.2 million electric customers across roughly three-quarters of Illinois. The program helps residential and business customers reduce energy costs through rebates, incentives, educational resources, and energy-saving products.
As the program continued to grow, the website struggled to keep pace. Finding information became increasingly difficult, and customers often had to navigate through multiple pages to locate the resources they needed. The redesign focused on creating a simpler, more intuitive experience that made important information easier to find while supporting the program’s continued growth.
Problem
When the website launched in 2008, it supported only a handful of incentives. Over time, new programs, products, educational resources, and customer segments were added, but the site’s structure remained largely unchanged.
As a result, navigation became confusing, pages overlapped in purpose, and important information was buried beneath layers of content. Customers frequently struggled to locate rebates, determine eligibility, or understand which programs applied to them. Outdated functionality also created inconsistent experiences across the site. It was clear the website needed more than a visual refresh. It needed to be reorganized around how customers actually searched for information.
Project Goals
- Simplify the site’s navigation so customers could quickly find incentives, resources, and program information.
- Modernize the experience while remaining consistent with Ameren’s brand standards.
- Improve accessibility and search engine optimization to make information easier to discover.
- Introduce a chatbot that could guide visitors to the right content and serve as a foundation for future enhancements.
- Expand and better organize educational resources, including energy-saving tips, videos, and customer success stories.
Analysis and Planning
As project manager and design lead, I knew the success of this redesign would depend on careful planning before any screens were designed.
Over the years, the program had grown into several distinct areas, including Residential, Business, Multifamily, Market Development Initiative, and Program Allies. Each team managed its own content, making it difficult to maintain consistency across the site.
I organized a series of working sessions with marketing leadership, program managers, and subject matter experts to review every section of the website. Together, we identified outdated information, removed duplicate pages, combined related content, and rewrote copy to make it easier for customers to understand.
At the same time, I partnered with our call center to learn where customers were struggling most. Their feedback highlighted common navigation issues and frequently asked questions, helping us prioritize improvements based on real customer experiences instead of assumptions.
Because of the size of the redesign, I also led the process of selecting and onboarding a local design agency to work alongside our internal team. This allowed us to combine outside design expertise with the deep program knowledge of our in-house staff.
By the end of the planning phase, we had a clear content strategy, a redesigned site structure, and alignment across every major stakeholder before design work officially began.
Pictured above: views of original sitemap layout and wireframes.
Design Phase
With the foundation in place, I shifted the team’s focus from planning to designing an experience that was significantly easier to navigate while supporting the needs of multiple customer groups.
I began by creating a new information architecture that simplified navigation and reduced the number of steps required to reach common destinations. Pages with overlapping information were consolidated, menu structures were reorganized, and important actions such as finding rebates or exploring energy-saving programs became much more prominent.
Working closely with our internal team and design partner, I led the creation of wireframes, interactive prototypes, and high-fidelity designs that balanced usability with Ameren’s brand standards. Every design decision was made with accessibility, readability, and mobile responsiveness in mind to ensure the experience worked well for all customers.
The redesign also introduced several new features, including an expanded resource library, interactive SVG maps, embedded forms that reduced unnecessary navigation, and Wattson, a chatbot designed to help customers quickly find relevant information. These additions created a more connected experience while providing a flexible foundation for future enhancements.
Throughout the design process, I worked with stakeholders across the program to gather feedback, refine solutions, and ensure the final experience met both customer needs and business objectives before development began.
Pictured above: view of prototypes for business, residential, market development initiative, program ally and multifamily page types.
Chat Bot
As the website redesign progressed, the chatbot quickly became its own project. Rather than treating it as another website feature, I led a series of planning sessions with program experts to understand the questions customers asked most often and the paths they typically followed through the site.
We started by building conversation flows for business customers before expanding the experience to support additional audiences. The goal was simple: help visitors reach the information they needed without digging through menus or multiple pages.
The result was Wattson, a friendly, branded chatbot designed to guide customers to the right resources as quickly as possible. To encourage interaction, I also helped introduce an animated version of Wattson for the website along with physical stickers used at energy efficiency events.
While Wattson currently serves as a navigation assistant, it was built with future growth in mind. As customer needs evolve, the chatbot can expand beyond navigation to provide more personalized support and additional functionality.
Pictured above: chatbot pathway sample, Interface, Wattson icon, Wattson animated gif, Wattson sticker 1 and 2.
Solution and Results
After a year of planning, design, development, and testing, the redesigned website launched at the beginning of Q3 2025. The final product featured a completely reorganized navigation system, a modern interface that stayed true to Ameren’s brand standards, improved accessibility and SEO, an expanded educational resource library, and the introduction of Wattson, a chatbot that helps customers quickly find the information they need.
The launch also gave us the opportunity to compare performance before and after the redesign. During the second half of 2025, website traffic more than doubled, average engagement time increased by 40%, and customer interactions across the site grew substantially. More importantly, customers could find incentives, educational resources, and program information with far less effort than before.
Watching the redesign evolve from months of planning into a successful launch was one of the most rewarding projects I’ve led. It reinforced the importance of combining user research, thoughtful information architecture, and collaboration across multiple teams to create digital experiences that deliver measurable results for both customers and the business.