Mobile app Conversion target bettered by 783% in 2015!
Downloads of the app in 2015, target bettered by 665,000 downloads!
2015 saw the ground up rebuild of the Trainline app, completely revised front-end architecture and creating new patterns for key areas of the app. With careful research and gaining understanding of different users mental models of travel, we started with the Checkout; and created a checkout which has become a standard bearer for efficiency.
Design Process
- The Approach: Discovery & Strategy I spearheaded a discovery phase involving deep-dive workshops with both internal stakeholders and customers. The objective was to map customer mental models and create key journeys and tasks, so that business requirements can be aligned with user needs.
- Market Analysis was important, but direct competitors were not digital, so it was important to get service design analysis of physical ticket purchases and travelcard travel. Many of the journeys were new to digital and Trainline was breaking new ground, with the 12 TOCs (Train Operating Companies) being far from forward looking.
- Mapping journeys from checking train times, to full purchase journeys. Some journey identification was part of the opportunity.
- Design ideation sessions, moving into design in Adobe and user journeys, in Overflow and prototypes.
- Prototyping & Validation: We moved quickly into rapid prototyping using Proto,io, Marvel and After Effects.
- Testing: Concepts were tested in bi-weekly face-to-face lab sessions.
- Continuous iteration on the prototypes and collaborating with Devs and BAs to identify problems there was rapid progress.
After simplifying the checkout flow itself, we added new features Guest Checkout, Paypal and Apple Pay (less than 3 weeks after Apple announced it) as well as removing postcode to minimise friction and redesigning the stored cards flow. This has become a definitive app checkout on mobile. This checkout increased Trainline’s overall CVR from 2.68% to 3.12% which in one release (before iterations) which blew away all our team KPIs for 2015 (original target for whole team was to hit 2.80 for the calendar year).
We set industry standards and Trainline’s app became a huge success in 2015, with patterns for train times widely copied both in the UK and internationally. The starting point for this was listing all possible information about a train journey and making using flows and analysis of the whole process to simplify it and make it as intuitive as possible. Then we could decide what information should be conveyed to the customer at each point in their journey.
We blew away internal targets on conversion and transition rates and won an Apple Best of 2015 award and were highly successful with App Store Optimisation. Trainline is now a standard bearer for start-up mentality in a corporate environment.
I worked in close partnership with a UI designer, Our roles over-lapped somewhat and we carried out our own research. The features we added in 2015 included:
- Revised App Information Architecture, movement to a “nav bar” style menu
- Simplification of journey (previous separate journeys for live times, departure boards and buying tickets)
- Award winning Checkout
- Implementation of Apple Pay (3 weeks after UK launch)
- Implementation of Guest Checkout (with massive fraud reduction)
- Paypal as Payment method
- Revised My Tickets (post-purchase) section and transitions
- Implementation of rebrand
- Apple Universal app for iPad and iPhone
- Revised Search Results screen (“One search”).
- App Store Optimisation
- Internal stakeholder management
UI Design credit: Rob Cleaton
