First Grade Western Website analysis

HOMEPAGE

Questions:

1. Can I take a dog on the sleeper service? Only assistance dogs can be conveyed in sleeper cabins. Dogs can otherwise travel in the guard's van in a suitable pet carrier.

2. How do I get from Looe to Polperro? There isn’t a route to this destination. When the destination in entered on the search engine of FGW its shows no results. However according to polperro.org the best way to get to Polperro is by taxi or bus. More information can be found here. http://www.polperro.org/buses.html#rail

3. How long before the train can I reserve a seat? 12 Weeks in advance.

4. My booked disabled assistance was not provided – what can I do? Unable to find information on the Older and disabled passengers booklet. Will call and find out.

1. Homepage slider -It shows various tourist destinations around UK. However when

clicked it doesn’t show any offers related to the advertised destinations rather it leads

to the Train times and tickets page where the customer has to feed in his journey details

as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Train times and tickets

2. Ticket Booking

One can plan and book one journey with single or return options. Ticket booking has 6

steps.

1. Entering Journey details

This feature has an option to enter only one journey details.

Tickets can be booked only 12 weeks in advance.

Following rail cards are supported – Disabled child rail card, Disabled adult

railcard, Family and friends railcard, Groupsave 3, Groupsave 4, HM Forces

railcard, New deal photocard,Network railcard, Annual Goldcard,Senior

railcard and 16-25 railcard.

There are no card charges.

There is no booking fee.

There is an advance search feature which has

(i) Open return Option

(ii) Journey options – All services and Direct services

(iii) Go via or avoid stations

(iv) Promotional codes ( Optional)

2. Train times

Results are shown for fastest available trains.

For cheaper and slower train tickets it shows a ‘Click Here’ Link.

Depart, Arrive, Duration and the number of changes is shown on this screen.

Prices are not shown yet. If one clicks on a one journey details a in browser

window pops out as show in figure 2.

These details can be sent over text to the following networks. 3, O2, Orange,

T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone. Further information can be found at

http://toc.textme.kizoom.co.uk/toc/html/faq.jsp#top .

Show prices will give results as shown in Figure 3.

Cheaper tickets show a list of available tickets which are sorted based on

Low- High price.

Figure 2: Journey summary

Figure 3: Prices and types of tickets

3. Choose seats

a) Seat Reservations ( This is not guaranteed)

i) Direction – Forward facing, Backward facing, Airline style

ii) Position – Aisle, Window

iii) Coach type – Quiet

iv) Table Seat

v) Near toilet

vi) Power socket

vii) At seat tv ( Free of charge)

b) London one day travel card – Figure 4 shows the options to buy travel cards.

Figure 4: London one day travel card

c) Bus travel- Using plusbus a passenger could avail a one day, 7 day or 1 month passes.

Info can be found at http://www.plusbus.info/ .

4. Getting tickets

This step requires logging in or registering for new users. Once logged in it

will show you the places where one could collect tickets. In our case of York –

London Paddington ‘Self-service ticket machine’ which will be available 2

hours after the booking is shown. It will also prompt to choose the station

where the ticket would be collected from and an reference number would be

send to the registered email.

Here one has the option to add one more journey.

5. Payment

This shows the summary of the journey details as shown in figure 5.

The customer has to enter payment details by entering card details, billing

address.

Cards supported are Visa Credit, Visa debit, Master card, Master card Debit,

Maestro, American express and Diners club.

Figure 5: Step 5: Summary of the journey before proceeding to payment.

It has three security features advertised. Verisign, Verfied by visa and master

card Securecode.

6. Confirmation

I didn’t not buy the tickets and hence not sure what this page would look like.

3. Social Media

Facebook and twitter advertised on the top right of the screen along with ‘My Account’

feature.

4. Live Departures – Any station name across their business can be entered in order to

obtain Live Departures and Live arrivals

5. Newsletter Sign up – A monthly newsletter containing special offers, competitions

and great ideas for day outs.

6. Facebook link has repeated again.

7. Journey check – This prompts the passenger to enter his journey details and shows

underground updates,line cancellation,train cancellations,train service updates, train

formation updates, catering updates, todays improvement updates, departures and

arrivals.

8. Questions – There is an automated chat feature with a robot replying to the answers.

This chat feature is powered by a third party Raspberry software.

http://www.raspberrysoftware.com/FGW/va/index.php . When asked questions like

Can I take a dog on the sleeper service? It gave irrelevant answers after which it asked

for a feedback.

9. Current Timetable

Timetables are available on 40 routes. They can be downloaded as a Normal

print ( A4 or smaller , similar to the ones in the stations) or Large prints (

Multiple pages) .

Ex: London Paddington – South wales

1. A normal print is 8 A4 pages.

2. A large print is 130 A4 pages.

Timetables are also available in QR code formats for smartphone downloads.