Case Study

Go South Group / Wilts & Dorset Buses

Wilts & Dorset and Go South are part of the Go-Ahead Group who own public transport companies that operate bus, rail, car-parking and aviation support services throughout the UK. Wilts & Dorset, established for nearly 100 years, runs buses in an area including Weymouth, Dorchester, Shaftesbury, Devizes, Swindon, Andover, Stockbridge, Romsey and Southampton.

Appius were selected to provide a full web strategy review for this division of the Go Ahead Group. This review allowed Go South the benefit from our 10 years of experience in the transport sector and generate a phased action plan to achieve maximum web results againsttheir specific objectives.

Marketing and service stakeholders were all involved in the initial Web Strategy Workshop
facilitated by Appius, allowing all ideas and different bus and coach service priorities to be taken into account. After successfully completing the process Appius were appointed as Go South’s single strategic internet marketing provider with a set of projects across their portfolio of bus and coach services.

“I was immediately impressed by the experience and foresight provided by the Appius team through the web strategy review”.

Sarah Lewsey, Marketing Manager for Go South Coast Group

Appius started with tactical ‘quick win’ campaigns raising website traffic and awareness within
the local area and commuter community, directed at the Wilts and Dorset and More Bus services.

We improved the level of analytics for the Go South marketing team, including the tracking of
key website goals.

The redesign dramatically improved the brand image of the service, while achieving better accessibility and information distribution to
customers via a new ‘Bus Timetable Finder.

Users can now sign up for emailed timetable updates on their favourite routes, giving a new level of personalised information to avoid customer confusion and reduce Go South’s printing costs during periods of timetable change.

Objectives

• create a more positive brand and service image
• improve website accessibility
• increased service awareness and website traffic levels
• targeting of specific high value customer groups
• stimulate more sales and sales enquiries
• cost savings and efficiencies
• increase information flow to customers
• data capture for marketing campaigns
• maximise use of free capacity
• improved customer retention
• better measurement of online results

Results

• fresh and positive online re-branding delivered through new Wilts and Dorset websites
• website traffic attracted more than 80,000 visitors within 2 months
• natural search website traffic already increased by 20% per month
• new W3C accessibility level achieved for 3 new websites
• 55,000 timetable downloads per month reducing printing costs
• data capture at a rate of 1500 new emails per month, segmented by route and area of interest
• single group and service level analytics solutions applied for general and comparative results measurement