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A good user experience
eases the burden on both
users and employees

Filling out forms online can be significantly easier for less experienced users than completing physical forms.

Sectors Public sector Subscriber Eko Sklad Services Digital Product Development Sectors Public sector Subscriber Eko Sklad Services Digital Product Development Sectors Public sector Subscriber Eko Sklad Services Digital Product Development

The effort we don’t put into simplifying content and processes is literally passed on to the user.

Maša Crnkovič

Head of Analytics and User Experience

Mistakes in user experience design can also hinder employees.

Eko sklad enables individuals, companies, and public institutions to obtain subsidies and favorable loans for environmental investments. All documentation and application forms for subsidies or loans are available on the website, but finding them was so difficult that even Eko sklad employees had trouble.

Identifying problems through user testing

We experienced firsthand how complex it was for general users to find the application forms. Within the team involved in the website redesign, no one had prior experience with environmental investments and incentives. This meant that when visiting the site, we found ourselves in a situation similar to that of most first-time users. We turned this apparent shortcoming to our advantage and became test users ourselves. We conducted a thorough analysis of the website, documented all user experience issues, and approached the redesign with the following goals:

Simplify access to relevant subsidies and loans

Reduce the number of customer calls caused by poor user experience and insufficient information on the website
Enable online form submission
Increase the number of properly completed subsidy and loan applications

Access the right application with just a few clicks

Most visitors to the Eko sklad website come with the goal of finding an application for a subsidy or loan. On the old website, users - especially individuals who rarely deal with environmental investments - faced their first obstacle in searching for applications due to the naming of categories for filtering results and the size of individual categories. We simplified the application search with a filter that takes into account different levels of users’ knowledge about environmental investments and narrows down the number of displayed results as much as possible.

On the left is the old filtering system, on the right the new one. A greater number of clearly named categories makes it easier for users to find the right applications.

Digitizing applications for subsidies and loans

Individual Eko sklad applications usually cover several different environmental investments. In practice, this means that users only fill out the part of the application that relates to their specific investment. This wasn’t clear on the physical form, but through digitizing the applications, we resolved this issue.

The user only fills out the part of the application that relates to their environmental investment We applied the same principle throughout the entire application structure, meaning the user no longer needs to delve into the public tender details to complete the form, which has consequently increased the number of correctly submitted applications.

Work on a website is never truly finished

Some of the goals have already been achieved with the redesign. Users can access the applications more easily and can fill them out online. With the implemented solutions, we have already reduced the number of “help calls,” and with further optimization of the applications, we aim to improve results even more.

Based on new user testing, we will add helpful hints to the applications (tooltips, hint text, error messages, etc.). These will further ease the burden on users when filling out forms and, by increasing the number of correctly completed applications, will also further relieve the employees at Eko sklad.

More about this project