Online trains rant

[andygates]

Look, it's easy, okay? There are rules for this stuff. Well-established, industry-standard rules that even tiny one-man sweetie vendors get right.

1 - If you advertise mysite.com, then mysite.com really has to work. www.mysite.com has to work as well. If mysite.com gives an error, people will assume your site is broken (or run by numpties) and walk away. This is such a total no-brainer but lots of places do it. You're relying on the current version of the current popular product to correct your error - how dumb is that?

2 - Never ever ever require people to register before they're allowed to browse. It just pisses them off. They'll go elsewhere. Shops don't take people's details when they walk through the door, do they? Footfall is more important than stats. I have five minutes to check my train times. That becomes four if I have to log on, and two if I have to register. Ain't enough time, I'll walk away.

3 - Offer all the options. That's the whole damn point of the internet. Don't do what Argos did initially and offer a subset of their inventory - because it'll (guess what) piss people off and they'll go elsewhere. So if you have child/smoking/bike/disabled ticket flags, offer the bastard things.

Stelios, where are you? The British train experience needs a kick up the arse.

Comments

[skean.livejournal.com]

www.nationalrail.co.uk?

Trainline started to p*ss me off as well

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

http://www.gner.co.uk uses the same interface/ticket database as Trainline but doesn't charge you £1.50 for using a credit card.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

It's so desponderising (tm) that I almost want to drive rather than face the horror again. On any site. The illusion of comfort and control vs. the frustration of bad design. Green travel evangelists take note: make it easy.

I'll pop into the station instead and talk to a human.

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

Someone should make an engine that does a search for you. One key question being 'would it be quicker for me to buy tickets from A to B, from B to C and from C to D than just one from A to D'? If you have the time, this is sometimes a lot cheaper on the longer routes.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

But not for a bike - mind you, cyclists on trains are pariahs anyway, because train companies are interested in bums on seats, not on transporting the public. Bah.

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

It's amazing to me, sometimes, just how bad some sites are. Yes, in the primordial days of the mid 90's, there was a lot that people were still figuring out in terms of how to provide usability and how to link pages together in ways that were intuitive to the casual browser. You had to make it up as you went along.

That was a decade ago. You need to do it right these days, and nobody is going to accept excuses any more. Having a half-assed web site is like having a receptionist who hasn't figured out the nuances of using the telephone.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Arguably, that still happens though. The wrong people drive the project: techies or accountants. These people should never, ever be allowed to define the customer experience, it's as dumb as letting marketing people manage the servers or balance the books (shudder).

The classic phones example, even now, is call centres in India. I love Indian entrepreneuralism but to support a UK company you need fluent English and basic cultural grounding - nobody in the UK, for example, should need to spell "NHS" phonetically or explain that phone numbers start "01" in most places. The companies who do this are finding that it's as annoying as automated systems.

[alacerus.livejournal.com]

I agree with Beng, i've spent a long time travelling by train cause didn't pass driving test till late. Nationalrail websites the one to use, my complaint about the trains is the prices. £30 Guildford to Bristol, £20 by car, think i'll drive....