Case Study

Irish Rail

Since 2011, Strata3 have partnered with Irish Rail to achieve a commercially successful & user-centric online sales channel.

The challenge

Irish Rail selected Strata3 to consult and deliver the 1^st fully responsive end-to-end rail site in Europe as the initial phase of a 3-year digital transformation programme. Our challenges were; to consistently innovate and explore user-centric approaches for the online channels, support the IT team as new underlying technologies were deployed as well helping the commercial and marketing stakeholders to increase online revenue as a total % share of annual income and communicate with a vast commuter user-base.

“Strata3 have helped us to attain a vastly improved web experience that our customers deserve. We highly recommend Strata3 for their innovation and cutting-edge development”.

MICK MCMAHON, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, IRISH RAIL.

The strategy

Our overarching strategy and philosophy for Irishrail.ie is to place the user at the heart of every digital product we deliver. To ensure this, we conduct primary research, as real-life passengers, to truly understand the user requirements and in turn to inform the technologies selected to underpin the ecommerce site. The site is Irish Rail’s eCommerce shop-front and a central pillar of Irish Rail’s strategic Customer 1^st programme, which seeks to enhance all digital touch-points including online, kiosk or in-station.

The implementation

Strata3 are part of an integrated partnership including; Irish Rail Marketing and IT, Squills in the Netherlands and Hacon in Germany who are all committed to a user-centric ethos. Strata3 specifically, have designed and developed several iterations of the consumer-facing site including the current fully responsive solution covering booking, timetabling, journey planning, seat-selection, MyAccount and 3D-secure payment screens on an enterprise WCMS. To deliver this world-class standard required a significant effort by Strata3’s UX, development and analytics teams.

The results

Online ticket sales increased by 6% year-on-year.
Online sales now account for 27% of total turnover.
Improved UX increased e-commerce revenue by 12.87% with monthly average of Euro 2.2 Million.
Average Monthly user sessions are 1,500,000 and duration up 22% since launch.
Pre-RWD Desktop (72%) Tablet (5%) Mobile (23%).
Post-RWD Desktop (45%) Tablet (12%) Mobile (43%).
Customer Satisfaction Monitoring show very high satisfaction levels with 85% satisfied (Aecom Research March 2015).

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