Great Rail Journeys
Find your perfect River Cruise
Great Rail Journeys specialises in offering guided tours across various destinations, providing customers with the opportunity to explore different regions and countries via train and cruise ships.
The problem
The River Cruise product had successfully created an extensive offline marketing campaign, which generated significant interest and engagement. The aim was to replicate this design online by providing a user experience that captures the essence of the offline campaign, while offering an improved user journey, aesthetically pleasing design with well-crafted landing pages.
The challenge
Review the existing offline campaign to understand its key elements, messages, and visual design. Analyse the current online experience, identifying areas for improvement in terms of UX, design and content.
Develop clear user journeys that guides visitors through the site and towards conversion. The landing pages and journeys need to effectively showcase the River Cruise product.
UX Audit of the current ‘River cruise’ section
The main hero area of the website lacked a clear message or proposition, leaving visitors uncertain about the site’s purpose. The search main feature was misplaced among navigational items, causing confusion and making it difficult for users to find what they were looking for – relocating it to the hero area would improve visibility.
The “Ways to Cruise” section was understated and failed to capture attention, needing more prominence to effectively showcase options. Overall, the page felt cold and transactional, lacking the warmth and engagement necessary to connect with users and create a welcoming experience. This lack of emotional content and appeal hindered user engagement and conversion, highlighting the need for a more user-centric design approach.
User journey and site structure
User journeys were developed for the ‘River Cruises’ section of the site to guide visitors smoothly towards conversion, ensuring intuitive and seamless navigation. A comprehensive sitemap was created to outline this journey, which was divided into ‘Overview,’ ‘Explore rivers,’ ‘Cruise types’ “and ‘Luxury ships’ landing pages. This included all necessary supplementary content to support and enhance the user experience and compliment offline campaign that were produced. The goal was to establish a well-organised framework that made information easily accessible and encouraged user engagement, ultimately aiming for higher conversion rates.
Structure and wireframes
After careful craft of the sitemap and journeys, wireframes of the website were meticulously designed to ensure a seamless user experience with alignment of the offline campaign. The structure defined the overall layout and organisation of the site, outlining the hierarchy of pages and the flow of navigation. Key sections, such as the homepage, ‘River Cruises’ section, and landing pages like ‘Overview,’ ‘Explore Rivers,’ and ‘Cruise Types,’ were strategically planned to facilitate easy access to information to guide users towards conversion of a tour.
Offline campaign
The customer experience needed to reflect with an existing offline campaign that had been created to match the improved look and feel. This meant that the online experience had to be cohesive with the offline branding, ensuring a seamless transition between both channels. The design, messaging and overall aesthetic of the website had to align with the offline campaign, providing a consistent and enhanced and seamless experience.
Design direction and UI
The next part of the process involved developing a design direction that aligned closely with the offline campaign’s aesthetic and messaging. This phase was crucial for ensuring consistency across all customer touch-points. The aim was to translate the visual elements and tone of the offline campaign into the online environment. This included adopting the same colour schemes, typography, imagery and branding elements that were used offline to create a cohesive look and feel.
The result
The result was a well-organised, user-friendly website and online presence that provided a seamless experience for customers. The cohesive design and consistent messaging reinforced the brand’s identity and ensured that users received a high-quality engaging experience whether they interacted with the brand online or offline. This alignment between the online and offline campaigns not only enhanced user engagement but also contributed to higher conversion rates, successfully meeting the project’s objectives.
I had the pleasure of collaborating with Richard on a project to enhance our tour offering for Great Rail, and I can confidently say that he is an exceptionally talented UX designer. Richard brought a unique blend of creativity, technical expertise, and a deep understanding of user experience principles to the table.
Throughout the project, Richard demonstrated a keen eye for detail and a proactive approach to problem-solving. He took the time to thoroughly understand our business objectives and user needs, which allowed him to propose innovative solutions that significantly improved our tour experience.
His designs not only met but exceeded our expectations, and they have received positive feedback from both our team and our customers.
