National Rail Enquiries relaunched its website last month, giving the site a much needed makeover.
The site was redesigned by Fortune Cookie, and at first glance, seems to be a massive improvement on the old version with a fresher, cleaner look. How well does it perform for users though?
Homepage
The homepage now has a much cleaner look than before, with greater prominence given to the search box, which is the main reason most people will visit the site.
Below this is the live departures and arrivals search box, while further down the page and below the fold is the 'Ask Lisa' which is a virtual agent which answers questions by users.
When I looked at the site, thanks presumably to the snow and ice around the UK, a stripped down version of the website was on offer, with many of the ads removed, as well as the 'Ask Lisa' function :
Journey searches
Searches are simple enough, and a drop down menu produces suggestions as users type, though I would find it easier if the stations were highlighted rather than just underlined:
Results appear quickly and are displayed clearly, in a large easy to read format. Thus you can see not only train times and arrivals, but also journey duration, number of changes, the relevant platform, as well as any delay alerts:
Rather than having to click a link and open a new page to see the information, simply mousing over the relevant link will display the information in a window so you can quickly see the details:
The site doesn't actually sell tickets, but you can get price information, and will show the cheapest ticket for the journey, and send you to the rail operator's or a third party site such as thetrainline to place an order.
Dealing with heavy traffic and weather disruptions
I've checked the site a few times since Tuesday night, and, as mentioned before, a stripped down version has been on offer for the past 24 hours or more, due to 'high traffic volumes on our servers'.
This is obviously better than attempting to provide the full functionality of the site which is slow to load, and perhaps the traffic is at unprecedented levels thanks to the cold weather this week, but National Rail should look at how it will cope more effectively with traffic spikes in future.
Also, since this website will be one of the first places people will look to see if their rail journey will be disrupted by the snow, perhaps the messaging around this could be clearer. At the moment, only a generic message is on offer: 'disruption due to ice and snow across the UK on Wednesday 6 and Thursday 7 January'.
What people need is specific information on the journey they have already booked or are searching for on the site. However, even if search results for specific journeys, only a generic message is provided:
If you follow the links, there is some more specific information on which lines / operators are suffering from delays, but it would be better if the relevant information was provided to customers as they search for a particular journey.
Mobile
With the old site, I used to access it on my mobile to check journey times and prices, and check for information on delays etc from my phone, but the site (the journey search part at least) is useless, since you cannot use the calendar tool to select journey dates.
For upcoming train times, I can at least use the trainline iPhone app, but this doesn't give me up to date travel information. For that, you need to pay £4.99 for the National Rail Enquiries app...
Conclusion
I like the new site a lot more than the previous incarnation, which was due an update. It is clearer and easier to use, and even with the heavy load on the servers, it works quickly enough.
The functions of the site are clear, navigation has been much simplified, and the overall look and feel is a big improvement. My only real grip is the fact that it will not work on my mobile, which is how I want to use the site a lot of the time.
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Graham Charlton is Senior Reporter at Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter or connect via Linkedin.
Posted 07 January 2010 09:32am by Graham Charlton with 16 comments
Tags: site review, National Rail, redesign, mobile
Topics: User Experience & Usability, Web Design
Sectors: Transport, Travel & Leisure
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Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
10:12AM on 7th January 2010
Perhaps you have a large screen, but here on a normal size monitor, I find it quite annoying that when I submit the journey form I then have to scroll down more than an entire pageful before I see any results - the first time, I actually thought it hadn't worked as all I could see was the header and the form again.
I find the hovering "windows" pretty unusable, especially on a small screen (plus even if you could get there it wouldn't work well on a mobile), as my mouse co-ordination is not great. And if I want to add a return journey, why do I have to wait two seconds for a pointless animation to shuffle the form elements into view? I would have thought looking up return journeys is a very common use case of the site.
http://traintimes.org.uk/ takes its information from the official site, and works on both computers and mobiles. It is quicker than the official site to load and run (no slow Flash animations of clocks telling me something my computer already does), puts things like iCalendar links up front rather than hidden away, and brings in changes, alerts, and stopping details all within the same page.
10:22AM on 7th January 2010
I find the lack of specific information extremely frustrating. Along with a lack of real 'live' data. I understand monitoring the entire train network is a massive task but something they should really ahve looked at if they were to re-design the site. It may just be a re-skin but i feel the functionality has taken a step back, which primarly is the most annoying thing.
National rail should invest a bit of money in producing a mobile friendly version of the site ( only going by what you mentioned above) as I'm sure your not the only person to gripe about this... I currently use an android app to check the times and has been reliable to the point where the information on the app matches the information on the site and not the information at the station.
Also i continualy find that the time is wrong when the page loads and when i enter my journey information i have to 'select a journey that is not in the past'
10:54AM on 7th January 2010
i agree, mobile version is lacking but critical. i don't know why they've spent their money reskinning when extending mobile functionality really should be core to this type of website. a nice-looking layout on a big screen isn't what this site's all about.
also the reload thing's driving me bonkers. wonder how much stress that's putting on their server.
in my opinion it's been poorly planned. they obvously didn't seek user's opinions (i've had many others comment on the need for a mobile/light version, even prior to this relauch) and they really should have waited for summertime to do the work. relaunched sites always have teething problems and this site was released shortly before the recent snowstorms. nice planning.
1:09PM on 7th January 2010
Looks as if the useful 'via' option has disappeared: you have to know which route(s) you want before seeking times for the separate parts of the journey.
The Live Station information is also de-improved! You have to specify the destination now, so if you have the option of more than one station (notably in London) you now have to enter all the London termini one by one. Improvement it isn't. (Was any Beta testing undertaken? Was it broken? Need fixing?? )
4:30PM on 7th January 2010
I think the new design and its usability on the likes of th iPhone is dreadful. A cynical me would comment that it is to push you towards buying the near £5 app in order to get live train coverage.
12:54PM on 8th January 2010
Afraid I don't like it either. Lokks to me as though it's trying to "look sexier" rather than being functional. As has already been said where's the VIA gone. Don't like the new date chosing part i.e no "to-morrow" lis box option and no "same day" for returns. Also seems slower than the old version. Plsu I really don't like the new Live Departures bit, it's much worse than the old one. Did they do any proper end-user usability testing, doesn't look like it to me
10:21PM on 9th January 2010
The redesign is hopekess, as is the inexplicable positive review. Fortunately, he comments have it right: an attempt at "prettyfying" the site has rendered it harder to use and less functional. The litmus test of sites like National Rail Enquiries is the speed it takes the user to access and absorb the info they're seeking. The prior design worked very well, packing a lot of info into a compact area, while remaining highly usable and readable. The redesign is hopeless, a major backward step. Plus it's full of schoolboy errors which indicate little proper testing has occurred. For such a well used website, that's very poor show.
1:10PM on 10th January 2010
It looks like no planning went into the layout of the page... there's so much wasted space... do I really need a giant Flash clock at the top of the page when I can quite easily see the time at the bottom right hand corner of my screen?
'Pretty' boxes look like they've just been thrown onto the page with what appears to be, no browser testing, unless text hanging out of the box is the style they are going for.
It's looks like it's another case where design (an over indulgence for gradients and rounded corners) has played more importance in the development of the site over the user.
Web Monitoring Manager at SciVisum.co.uk
10:16AM on 13th January 2010
Well I can find at least one positive for the team who put this together.
At least they planned in the 'stripped down' version - for use when traffic is huge.
Not many sites do that, but it is a very sensible tool to have built in.
For many of the folk I talk to about web performance improvement, there is no way they can justify spending 20 or 30 times as much on infrastructure, just to handle the 'once in a blue moon' traffic peaks'.
Eg retailers, who may have user peaks at the very time they have big sales on and are thus making less margin per order anyway!
So a stripped-down site is a good investment - I;ve seen Boden use it effectively for their peak-weeks.
Another route of course is building in more Cloud based resources, to make it easier to dial-in extra capacity as needed.
But load testing becomes a little more involved. Don't be tempted to assume that the cloud you've built can scale the way yout tech designed it.... as it's easy to overlook stuff and end up with disappointing scalability anyway
But, it's any good practise for Mktg folk to ask for meaningful load test reports now and again.
Deri
10:28AM on 13th January 2010
The website may look good but in practice it has a few issues such as trying to add a return journey and using it on PDAs. As a web designer, I would prefer the old clunky version back as at least it worked, even though it was steam driven!
4:08PM on 15th January 2010
New site is rubbish, I never get to see live arrivals/departures on my work PC nor my home PC anymore, the time it takes to type in the station code and move the next entry is like watching a snail it's hopeless, and makes checking my home journey esp in the bad weather no point, I had bought the iPhone version and that is now what I use as thie main site is a complete waste of time.
Even when they say they are giving a light version I don't get anything. Who has that time to waste of such a bad heavy resource design. Clearly testers for it where not commuters.
12:39PM on 24th January 2010
I agree with most comments here. Two major annoyances I have found: Tool tips, which appear when you mouse over various elements, don't disappear very easily and then cover up where you want to click. You have move the mouse right away before it disappears. Poor design! Also, I tried to change the type of railcard and it simply wouldn't let me, instead carrying on giving me the price of the ticket with the original railcard.
8:04AM on 9th February 2010
Today's model trains primarily come ready to run. This means all you need do is pull her out the box, make the proper connections and let her roll! This can be a good thing for beginners although for more advanced modelers you may want to make some ... If you’re looking for advice, I'd go for a higher grade set from Kato, Atlas, Bachmann, Walthers or Micro trains.
3:58PM on 16th February 2010
This review is superficial and completely useless. It can be summarized as "oh, how cute!".
The new site is considerably worse than the old one, for these reasons:
- the "live departure and arrivals" functionality has been broken (as already noted by others here). It was perfectly good, but now is totally useless
- in general it is harder to find what one wants. The old site was maybe "uglier", but everything was within easy reach.
10:29PM on 20th February 2010
The 'new improved' Journey Planner doesn't work on my ASUS PC700 m/c, running Linux. The home page comes up brefly, then clears down. More recently, with a report that the 'Security Certificate' isn't recognised. Even if I authorise it either 'for this session', or 'permanently' the site won't stay up.
As far as I'm aware nothing's been altered at my end. Anyone else with a PC running Linux plus Firefox browser with the same 'problem'?
But there's always 'Die Bahn', which offers an English version, worked well right from the start and still loads and runs. 'Danke Schon, Deutsche Bahn: Auf wiedersehen, National Eisenbahn'.....
1:32PM on 10th March 2010
I have to agree with the negative views about the new site. The old version was easy if you used it at lot..we did. The new one looks good but oh dear it just doesn't deliver, particularly on live deps/arrivals and pricing comparisons on ticketing are now hopeless. I'd much prefer to see the old one reinstated in total, forget the pretty looks, it worked. Phil