Designing and developing an easy to use website that works on a multitude of devices and provides the kind of tools riders expect — trip planning, real time information, rider alerts and ticketing information — can be a headache for many agencies. Over the past three years, Steer Davies Gleave has been working with a number of transit agencies to help them design and develop their next generation user experience for transit information. In short, we’ve been striving to make it as painless and exciting as possible to create new web tools that support and grow existing transit ridership.
Over the past year, our Digital team has been working closely with two major transit clients to redesign and develop their web user experiences — Sound Transit in Seattle’s Puget Sound and San Diego’s Metropolitan Transit Service (MTS). The two agencies have over a million visits per month to their respective websites, with the most popular features being bus schedules and trip planning. Both agencies wanted to make the most of modern smartphone technologies that would allow them to reach and satisfy a broader user-base.
Our task with both agencies was to create mobile-user focused web sites — building on the trend that over 60% of web traffic to transit agency websites is via a smartphone or tablet. Research suggested that riders don’t necessarily want to download a third-party app and their first port of call tends to be the agency’s website for ‘trusted’ information. They want up-to-date information and they want it on their phones.
For Sound Transit, we developed a responsive mobile website that provides key rider tools: trip planning, real time information and schedules. GPS integration allows the user to locate themselves to find local bus-stops and plan trips from where they are right now. The website works on the majority of smartphones and tablets and is automatically triggered when the agency website is accessed via a mobile device.
“Our user research told us that customers wanted a better way to navigate our system on their phones. This next generation site gives them better tools to get where they need to go.”
Bruce Gray, PIO, Sound Transit.
For MTS we designed and developed a brand new mobile responsive website, using their existing corporate brand guidelines, that would provide riders with on the go trip planning, schedule and real time information. We took a new approach to displaying the traditional schedule, using GPS and live data to enhance the user experience – allowing the user to discover new routes and understand how the MTS network operates.
“The increased functionality, improved ease of use on mobile devices and updated look and feel is a quantum leap forward from our old site.”
Rob Schupp, Director of Marketing and Communications, MTS.
Both websites use a variety of open data sources to provide rider information, without the need to create new or complicated databases.
You can access the MTS website here. The Sound Transit mobile website can be accessed by simply going to http://www.soundtransit.org on your smartphone or tablet.
If you are looking to refresh your existing website and want to speak to us for advice, please contact Craig Nelson
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