Since the beginning of the year they have been the topic of conversation in households across
the country – and not for a good reason. Load shedding has resulted in many companies facing financial
difficulties, causing traffic jams and just making life a lot more difficult for ordinary South Africans.
Eskom is the parastatal responsible for providing South Africa with electricity. Luckily, according to
Eskom, load shedding have been put on hold due to the fact that everyone in South Africa has joined hands
and decreased their power demand.
The Website Under Review
This document is dedicated to Eskom, the company responsible for providing us with electricity. Finding
the website on Google is easy, with a global and local search for “Eskom” they are the first four results,
with the first one containing additional links for pages like vacancies, contact details and media releases.
The Target Audience
When one considers the recent uproar when Eskom started load shedding, the target market for their website
is basically anyone in South Africa that is dependent on power supply from Eskom.
Overview of the Website
The website look and feel is distinctly Eskom, their corporate colours are cleverly used throughout the
website. The website’s layout is also very easy to read with enough white space. There are no flash animations
or scrolling texts that will distract your attention.
The home page is quite short with three columns with contains the links to the other information pages. The
middle of the page contains six sections with interesting headings like “How electricity is made” and “Building
new power stations”. Considering the crisis the country experienced this is a fantastic resource to make people
aware of the process involved in producing power.
These sections contain a number of articles that can satisfy someone who just wants to know more to a student
who need detailed information for a school task.
Website Structure and Website Design
As said above, the website design is easy to follow and the layout and colours used does promote readability.
The font size is maybe a little small, so that may be something to look at. The left hand menu is clearly marked
for various audiences, from the general public to investors and the media.
One of the website tools they implemented is the power status dial. This dial indicates the power demand at
the time and also the probability of preventative load shedding.
Another tool that works along with this dial is the ability to search for you suburb to see when you were
likely to experience load shedding. The only downside is that you have to know exactly what your suburb is called
as well as the extension, if applicable.
The site map for the site is very comprehensive, however there are certain sections that doesn’t contain a
description to tell you what you can expect in the section, only links to lengthy documents, for example M&V
Guidelines. They also don’t tell you want M&V is, making it difficult for people who are looking for information.
Conclusion
The Eskom website is a very interesting and user friendly website, there are very few things that must be
changed and provides any interested party with all the information they need. If you would like us to do the
same analysis on your company’s website, simply complete your details below.
If you want the same analysis on your company's web site feel free to contact us today!
Email: info@etraffic.co.za for more details.
