Wasco Electric Cooperative

Overview

Building on a Strong Foundation

Wasco Electric Cooperative (WEC) has been serving rural Oregon for more than 80 years with a mission grounded in reliability, service, and community. As a not-for-profit cooperative, WEC is focused on empowering the people they serve. With more than 3,000 members across five counties and over 1,600 miles of lines, WEC needed a website that reflected their modern mindset while remaining true to their local roots.

Having partnered with Powerful to build their previous site, WEC returned to the same trusted team to bring a fresh look and improved functionality to their digital presence. Their goals were clear: represent the cooperative as modern and forward-thinking, keep content current, showcase community involvement, and make it easier for members to find what they need.

Turning Print Into Purposeful Web Content

One of WEC’s top priorities for the redesign was keeping their website content fresh and community-focused. They wanted to ensure that the same stories being shared in print—especially through Ruralite magazine—could be repurposed into content that lived dynamically on their website. Rather than uploading static PDFs or linking away from their own site, WEC opted into Powerful’s monthly service to transform these stories into web content.

Each month, WEC sends in their featured Ruralite articles, which Powerful turns into engaging posts displayed prominently in the “News & Hot Topics” section on the homepage. These posts display compelling headlines, vibrant imagery, and clickable titles that invite further reading. Most importantly, the homepage is set up to automatically display the four most recent stories– ensuring the site stays up to date without manual steps from WEC’s staff.

This ongoing content pipeline keeps the cooperative’s community presence visible and vibrant. Visitors arriving at the homepage don’t just see utility tasks—they see stories of linemen bringing power to Guatemala, updates on local scholarships, or insights into reliability improvements. By turning printed material into accessible, real-time updates, WEC brings their community service to life in a format that’s easy to find, read, and share. The feature supports their goal of showcasing timely content and reinforces their commitment to transparency and local impact.

Navigation That Leads With Clarity

Alongside content updates, WEC knew that a well-designed website should make completing essential tasks fast and frustration-free. Many members visit the site for specific reasons—like paying their bill, starting service, or reporting an outage—and WEC wanted those pathways to be as clear and accessible as possible.

To meet that need, Powerful implemented its Deschutes task-oriented blueprint. Right below the top hero image, before a visitor even begins to scroll, they’re greeted with five large call-to-action buttons leading to the most common tasks: Pay My Bill, Start/Stop Service, Rebates, Report an Outage, and Careers. Each button is clearly labeled and visually distinct, ensuring that visitors know exactly where to click, no matter what device they’re on.

The Deschutes blueprint puts the member experience front and center. By meeting visitors with their top tasks immediately, the design respects their time and reduces confusion. There’s no hunting through dropdowns or guessing where to go. Whether someone is checking service options from a mobile phone or submitting an outage report during a storm, the site is structured to get them where they need to be—quickly, confidently, and without a second thought.