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Brief
In January 2009, digital agency Design UK was appointed by Rail Europe UK to undertake a large scale project involving the Information Architecture (IA) and design solution for a new website.
The European rail travel specialist also required Design UK to run a complete search strategy, including SEO and PPC, to drive traffic to the site. This was with the aim of increasing conversion on the site which, at project start, provided 54% of Rail Europe’s total sales. Design UK was tasked with helping to increase that figure by driving more traffic to the site and improving the overall user experience.
Strategy
Rail Europe is the biggest outlet coordinating the selling of tickets and passes for rail trips across Europe and beyond. With major competition coming from budget airlines, Design UK worked to design a site that would increase Rail Europe’s market share, and demonstrate rail travel as a viable alternative to air travel. To do this, Design UK helped to raise awareness of the European train network and its destinations by building the site around Rail Europe’s wealth of content.
Design UK’s website design focused on directing visitors to comprehensive information about both the trains and their destinations, in order to help people plan their trips and purchase their tickets and passes. The completely rebuilt Information Architecture was designed to facilitate all user journeys. This ensures people visiting the site at different stages of the decision making process can find all the information they need in order to give them the confidence to make a ticket purchase.
“The travel industry in Europe is worth €246 billion, and as consumers become more aware of their carbon footprint and the green credentials of rail compared to air travel, we wanted to make sure all the information they need is right at their fingertips,” said Stuart Alldis, Head of e-Commerce at Rail Europe. “The website was redesigned to meet that need with intuitive user journeys and more content, and we’re certain that ticket and pass sales will rise as a result.”
While the design and branding of the website is vital to providing people with the information they need for booking trips, Rail Europe also needed to focus on driving traffic and awareness of its offering. Therefore, another priority was to guarantee visitors can find the website in the first place through increased search activity. As such, Design UK worked to ensure that the Rail Europe site is completely search-optimised, appearing at the top of all rail or destination related searches. The search campaign also included optimising for search terms related to general European travel and weekend breaks.
Execution
Design UK began the project in January 2009. The first step was a full analysis of the old Rail Europe site when Design UK was able to pinpoint problems and better understand why the site was not securing as many sales as it could have been. The intelligence gathered here showed that the text-heavy site was confusing customers, with the front-page navigation pane alone showing multiple tabs in addition to the links and extra information offered in the site’s body text. With this in mind, once the analysis had been completed and the re-design began, Design UK set about simplifying the site to create better user journeys and make more of the content Rail Europe was providing.
As part of the project, Design UK also improved Rail Europe’s SEO so that it is listed at the top of all rail or destination related searches. This helps to drive people to the site, the challenge then is keeping them there.
Leigh Whitney, MD at Design UK explained: “When we started working with Rail Europe, the top priority was to compete with the growing army of budget airlines which were enticing customers. Rail Europe wanted to position rail travel as a genuine alternative to air travel. To do this, we developed an IA that would direct visitors to information about the trains and their destination. We created an engaging site that details all the information clearly, making the customer journey as simple as possible. For example, if a visitor is looking at the guide to Paris, the search engine auto-fills so their ticket is just a couple of clicks away. It’s that kind of journey we aim to create for every site we design because it’s that ease-of-use that draws in visitors and turns them into customers.”
Results
Following a year-long project, the new Rail Europe site underwent a soft launch in mid-March 2010. The aim was to identify and remedy any issues in advance of the formal launch. An unexpected test of the site, and a boost in the battle against budget airlines, came in the shape of the Icelandic volcanic eruption when the site received its highest number of visitors ever as flights across the world were cancelled. The site performed well, with no outages and retained speed, despite an unprecedented 6 times the number of visitors usually expected over the same period.
Features of the new site include a faster checkout system, interactive maps and a four-tab pane navigation pane to simplify the customer journey from browse to buy. The site’s content also helps people choose destinations and journeys with travel guide sections – ‘Featured destinations’, ‘Ways to travel’ and ‘Featured trains’. There is also a news section which includes up-to-date travel news which could affect journeys.
Another key development is the improved booking process. “Booking a one leg journey from London to Paris is relatively simple,” commented Alldis. “But when you add another leg to that journey, from Paris to Nice for example, things get much more complex, with hundreds of fare combinations from multiple carriers. We’ve worked closely with Design UK to ensure that the whole booking process is as easy as possible for our customers. We’ve worked hard to improve the behind the scenes booking process that the customer doesn’t see, but also to simplify the booking form and the way the results are presented.”
The IA Design UK developed will help Rail Europe fulfil its ultimate goal of increased conversion. The design of the previous site meant that the wealth of content available was being lost and the complexity of the booking system was frustrating potential customers. To address this, Design UK created a more streamlined home-page that would make it easier to find information and book tickets.
The site officially launched on May 10, 2010 and will continue to be developed, with new destinations scheduled to be added over the summer, and a section on ski trains currently being developed in time for the 2010/11 season.
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