DXA Finalists Spotlight – ORM/Transport for Wales

There isn’t long left until the UK Digital Experience Awards 2019.

As we prepare for the big day on 12th July, we’d like to share the last in our series of interviews with ORM, who are entering the Awards on behalf of three clients – Artemis, Moat and Transport for Wales.

To describe their initiative with Transport for Wales, I spoke to Neil Clayton, ORM’s Head of Sales and Marketing.

Navigating the problem

‘We have very strong experience within the transport industry,’ Neil explained, ‘but Transport for Wales is a slightly different organisation to other companies – it covers the whole country of Wales instead of just one line.’

Due to the nature of the bidding process, there’s often a short turnaround in between winning the contract and launching the website. As Neil put it, ‘we had a ten week marketing window to deliver a new marketing website for the whole country.’

This meant launching a workable, bilingual site in a short time period. And this wasn’t just any website. ‘Behind the scenes, there’s integration to national rail, booking systems and ticket systems – there are so many different systems that it’s a platform in itself…there’s lots of stuff to weave in to deliver the right kind of customer experience.’

Ticket to ride

ORM are accustomed to working with partners in the transport industry, meaning they approached the project from a ‘position of strength’. But it was still challenging to deliver the project on time. ‘There’s no handover from franchise to franchise,’ Neil explains. ‘You have to build from scratch. The launch date was key because without it, the previous website would be shut down and customers would get nothing.’

As for the ultimate purpose of the site, it’s ‘to be a destination for Wales. It’s not just to see what train you can get but making it a digital destination. Over the next 15 years, people can come to the sight to find out more about Wales and see what they can do from a leisure point of view, and also book their travel.’

Ongoing project maintenance is also key to ensuring this website runs smoothly. ‘Keeping the lights on, keeping it working, as well as ongoing optimisation of the website. We’re looking at different ways we can introduce new features and new functionality. Three months ago we introduced personalisation software to start tracking and collecting relevant data. And then, over the next six months, we’re ramping it up to introduce true personalisation. Not just in terms of geolocation, but going beyond that to really understanding customer behaviour. It’s a testament to us as a business to know that we can deliver a quality product in that time frame.’

We’d like to wish ORM/Transport for Wales the very best of luck at the UK Digital Experience Awards.

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