Arriva website revamped

Mar 15 2009 by Anna Blackaby, Birmingham Post

One of Europe’s largest transport organisations has relaunched its UK bus division website following a major overhaul by leading Midlands-based web design and build agency Freestyle Interactive.

Arriva, which delivers one billion passenger journeys every year across Europe, commissioned the complete redesign of its website to more positively reflect the Arriva brand.

A core part of the brief was to give customers quick and easy access to timetable, ticketing and special offer information as well as the implementation of a user-friendly Content Management System (CMS) to enable Arriva’s regional management teams to update website content.

Arriva commercial director Chris Hopkins said: “We recognise that our web presence is becoming increasingly important to our business and the way we communicate with our loyal customer base.

“Our customers are going online to find up-to-date travel information and we need to make sure they can easily find the latest about their bus journeys, tickets and special offers”.

The objective of Arriva’s new website is ultimately to encourage more passengers onto Arriva buses, but also to ensure that customers experience a great “journey” when visiting the site, with easy access to timetable and ticket information as well as special offers and inspiration for travelling with Arriva.

The site also enables regional marketing teams to drive, manage and measure marketing and customer loyalty campaigns, using e-mail and other channels.

The website uses the Ektron Content Management System and currently integrates with a third party ticket system for online bookings.

Future phases of the website will see integrated e-commerce, User-Generated-Content (UGC), blogging and an increase in targeted customer communications.

Site analytics, hosting and maintenance as well as continuous optimisation via Search Engine Marketing and online campaigns is all part of the ongoing package provided by Freestyle for Arriva.