East Coast Travel Portal
National Express Group plc (LSE: NEX) is a UK-based transport group with headquarters in London that operates bus, coach, rail and tram services in the UK, the US and Canada, Australia, Spain, Portugal and Morocco and long-distance coach routes across Europe. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The site is now run by East Coast and Splendid are working on the redesign of the site to fit with the new branding.
The Brief
Based on our work with Flow Interactive designing the booking engine for National Express we were asked to design the supporting travel portal to help customers plan their journey on National Express.
Our Solution
The travel portal was designed to be launched alongside the redesigned booking engine and provide a seamless travel experience from planning to buying, all part of a shift to getting customers to book online as opposed to the phone. There was also a desire to create a more personal travel experience and provide users with more customised destination information to help inform a travel choice.
The research by Flow Interactive showed us some clear areas for improvement and the rise in popularity of Web 2.0 features, so called Rich User Interfaces gave us some of the tools to answer the problem.
We followed our proven user centred design and development process over 3 months and included the following activities.
- Research and heuristic reviews of competitor sites as well as interviews and stakeholders such as the commercial and technical team at National Express
- User testing of the existing GNER site and those of its competitors by Flow Interactive
- Rapid interaction design and prototyping of the concept and interface, each phase increasing in detail and scope
- A content audit and review of what levels of content were needed on the new site
- Visual design with a focus on creating a flexible interface that could grow with the site and with the brand as has been shown by the complete re-brand following the takeover by National Express
- Development of standards compliant HTML and CSS code with full documentation for the development partner Atos Origin
The design and development of the GNER booking engine and website has taken the best part of a year but has launched with the following functionality.
- Intergarted booking engine for seamless travel planning & booking
- Dynamic service updates so you can see how the trains are running
- Destination information and offers to help you in your travel choices
Results
In the first 6 months since the web site's launch in November 2007:
Overall revenue was up 30%
The conversion rate was over 12% - up 50% from the year before
The site has also won the award for IT Excellence at this years HSBC Rail Business Awards.
Project lead Paul Bishop
For more information please call - +44 (0)20 7395 4800 or email info@howsplendid.com