Hover over the images for further explanations 
Of Southern Vectis, we commented in April 2006, “Someone’s designed what must be one of the clearest and easiest to use bus company websites, at http://www.islandbuses.info/.” We can’t believe we also added that “Basically and intrinsically it’s hotter than a Sharon Stone movie, without being a turkey.” In our defence, it was the time of *that* film.
We even included islandbuses.info in August's 7+1 Commercial web sites, stating that it was “possibly the simplest and easiest bus operator site, with most of what you need to get around the Isle of Wight by bus, in only a few clicks”.
Last week, the site got more complicated but SVOC also went one better, by redesigning the site while keeping its overall look and feel. SVOC’s expanded the range of menu options from just six (plus sub-menus) to 20 (with considerable sub-menus). The actual number of pages once was between up to 40. Now its something like ten times that number. And remember that the network's relatively small.
We trust that we’re not starting to sound like Buses mag's Richard Delahoy’s former ‘Buses on the Web’ column but it’s a pity that SVOC has torn down the interactive map that adorned its first islandbuses front page. After all, that was a clear and easy way for first time and regular travellers to find out the key information they required. It’s what they needed. It’s still on the site but less accessible.
What the visitor immediately notices now are key points about the site, the island, things to do and Citaro route no. 9. The visitor may also notice a link on the font page that usefully helps them from ferries to SVOC’s buses. What a great idea.
Conclusion? Still a great site.
But the most interesting and novel feature is its Forum, where the public can if they wish leave comments. Is this a first for a commercial bus business? Not much use of it yet, but it's early days. This surely must be an interesting tool to get to customers, even if it has the capacity to wrong-foot. Let’s hope it’s moderated.
What SVOC might also find useful in reaching its passengers is an earthy tell-it-like-it-is blog. Commercial blogs can transcend reality. They have the power to appear as if written from the heart. They seem very personal and close up.
And if the Israeli secret police can blog to attract recruits, why can’t a bus operator blog to attract passengers?
SVOC Web History:
Launched February 1998 as much as a vehicle for the Great British Bus Timetable. Back in the dark days of Web1.0, the site advised you to view at a screen resolution of no less than 800x600 pixels, use a browser that could display frames and call back regularly, as the site was constantly under construction (how things change).
May 2000 saw links to Solent Blue Line added.
A major revision in May 2001 give it a less linear feel, in a format that was basically static for the following five years, though with improvements particularly in how bus times and tours were presented.
Completely made-over in April 2006 using Flash to coincide with the launch of a new ‘green’ network identity.
Content added in March 2008 to make the site richer and even more user friendly, to include coach hire, a forum and the dreaded fleet lists.
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
They Need a Blog, Too
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10 comments:
Uni-link had a forum a couple of years ago when one of the drivers ran the site.
It was stopped as people were misusing it and just chatting.
Now the site is run by the Uni, and is nowhere near as good.
http://www.uni-link.info/
wilts and dorsets site is the only go south coast web site that is now out of date. both island buses and solent blue lines have been revamped recently. wilts looks tired but functional against their sisters.
Yeah. Wilts looks OK, but could do with updating.
According to the SV manager it's next on the cards
Sorry cogidbnus, but you are totally wrong. The operator you are talking about isn't even First, it's Solent Blue Line (Bluestar). Starting off by blaming an operator who doesn't even go there is not a good start.
There has been loads of info for customers, with the proposed service changes and the final results being shown to passengers well before anything happened, have a look on the bluestar website. The Daily Echo widely reported the changes too.
I haven't heard anything about the driver re-allocations.
When Alex Hornby said that "if you can't get to your destination at the time you wish, try travelling on the previous journey", he was talking about the severe delays that are being caused by major roadworks on the M273 - affecting services nowhere near Marchwood. These roadworks are causing major problems for all operators, and of course are entirely out of their control. The situation on this is being constantly updated on the website to. Don't call someone a d***head when you are ill-informed.
You said "so what game are they really (long-term) playing at?"
Well, all of the changes are being made to keep SBL's (Bluestar's) future good in the long-term, with all the problems that operators are currently facing. I'm sure they wouldn't do it for the sake of it.
It has to be said that First are now the quality operator for the vast majority of Southampton public transport users.
Solent Blue Line users are so used to 'new starts' that they know it actually means 'more cuts'
Blue Line didn't even have printed timetables for the changes available more than a week after they started - yes the internet is OK but not everyone has it.
I'm not generally a fan of First, but they really have got their act together in Hampshire
Yes sorry about the operator cock-up - far too many drinks, too far into the wee small hours of a rest day...deadly when combined with a keyboard!
However, a colleauge of mine lives in and commutes from Marchwood...
I'm afraid that according to him, a lot of the new timetables STILL aren't up at various stops...worse still the old ones are in some cases still in place...
The timetable leaflets were certainly not available by the change date, or up to a week later either, so you can hardly accuse them of overdoing the publicity can you?
The publicity they got locally appeared to be mainly because of the controversial nature of the changes - and they failed to keep residents updated with last minute changes/retendering etc...I'm told that until the last couple of days SBL staff were denying the existence of the 1835 to Marchwood...some customers got to hear of it, others didn't...
AS regards the Hornby statement, I'm well aware of it's origins - but as in these changes, the first two departures from Marchwood were knocked off, and during the first week the new first journey was totally unreliable (didn't turn up at all on the first morning and ran late, or on incorrect routing for most of the rest of that week), then any statement of this nature is going to appear pretty stupid to Marchwood residents...and with service changes coming up it would after all be pretty naive to expect them not to link the two issues...I'm just surprised the press haven't...
I'm advised the service is still not reliable...
As I implied in my previous comment we can all be guilty of cock ups - and things can always go amiss with a major change (by god I've had some good ones too!) but this one appears to be SO bad I'm almost convinced that the company don't really care about the route.
Well Hampshire County Council are in charge of changing the timetables, so you can't blame SBL.
Interestingly, a recent BBC News clip showing how badly the government's concessionary fare scheme is going and the effects it will have come April 1st shows a number 8 passing .... with no passengers on it.
Since when do Hampshire County Council assume responsibility for changing bus stop publicity?
They've never done any of mine!
Now nearly two months on from a major service change, I hoped that readers may be interested to understand some of the background. I should also confess that the whole site is new to me, and what an excellent all round presentation it is! Well done and thank you to whomever is in charge - it's a great read!
I hoped that some open and honest accounting for some of the problems during the changes will offer people a more balanced insight, rather than simply resorting to hurling verbal abuse in our direction.
The lack of information available was inexcusable and caused a great deal of frustration on our part. Not only were we heading into a major service change, but also a complete restructure of the business and locations used; both were sorely needed to improve fortunes of Solent Blue Line, now obviously regarded as a stand-alone business in the Go-Ahead Group and not being able to be propped up by the Island when in Southern Vectis ownership. That’s probably a bit too much of a sweeping statement, so apologies if that causes any offence, but nevertheless there were some urgent changes required to improve the company’s fortunes. All this coincided with the not-inconsiderable task of compiling SBL’s Uni-Link bid and the interview process. Oh, and the horrific effects of congestion across our network just to directly affect the delivery of everything too.
Anyway, when we registered the changes, we offered a press release to all local media – this was on December 24. The Echo only bothered to put something in in around late January. Now, we accept with any service change, that you register the routes formally, as required, and then the local authorities take a view with anything they may wish to replace, which can be often covered by a short-notice registration. Hence why we did not want to put much into print that we’d have to withdraw and promote again to users. A large change is difficult enough to communicate to customers as it is, and in our determination to promote a simple service, we know that this would have caused even more confusion (I hope that doesn’t sound too patronising!!). So, hence why we used Internet a lot, keeping customers as informed as much as possible along the way - as well as hand-outs and notices on buses saying that as soon as final info was available we would post it to them for free if they supplied their email/postal address. I also personally attended local, open meetings with communities and parish councils in Thornhill, Velmore, Marchwood, Hiltingbury, Chandler’s Ford, Hedge End, Eastleigh and Bitterne to keep people up-to-date with the changes and take feedback, in addition to the standard fayre, such as back-and-forth discussions with the three local authorities we deal with. The key thing I was bothered about was letting people know there was a change, and once we had confirmed and finalised news to offer, we would then declare our hand.
I had already decided that the way forward with publicity is a decent web effort, an all-in-one booklet with maps, ticket prices and times, and stop-specific information. I hope all can understand that this takes time to put together. In the background, you also have to keep staff informed and build timetables, schedules, duties and especially more so if staff are changing depots. It’s a reasonable challenge to have to deliver, and if all things were equal, it should not pose a company such as ours a problem.
However, it does when the local authority make their final decision 5 days before the change, which is exactly what happenedin this case. I fully appreciate there are reasons for this, so I don’t want this viewed as a political swipe at our colleagues there, with whom I believe we have a good working relationship. They have a process to go through too, and there’s real politics involved as well. Not that any of this makes life any easier for the customer.
Oh, and the 1835 to Hythe via Marchwood on Bluestar 8 was part of this final decision – hence why there was confusion all round. Bluestar 8 remains a tendered service and all information and feedback shows that the service now runs well. Apart from when the A35 gets shut or someone decides to dig up a fly-over. And we also accept the cock-up with the first journey of the new service on the chin - the bus ran but the driver did get confused with the route around Marchwood but did have all the info (all staff were issed with info-packs), and we dealt with that one in the way that you may expect.
The website was completely up-to-date at the time of change, and also allowed a preview of all new timetables the same day that HCC got back to us. Timetable booklets, obviously taking a little longer to produce, were available a few days after the change - thanks for your kind words on the site about this, and for the constructive feedback. Will discuss all with Ray Stenning next time when we get together to produce the next version. We have got through nearly 20,000 copies since the change by making these available on buses, and 65 other sites representing a whole host of other locations inc shopping centres, places of work, bus/coach/ferry/air/rail 'stations' and more.
At the week of the change, much of Southampton’s bus network was suffering owing the roadworks on the M27 and the knowck-on effect on local roads and motorway junctions. We know our fellow operators shared these issues and were surprised once we asked the Echo to let passengers know that we were aware of the issues and we were monitoring the situation carefully. The last thing we wanted was commuters getting to their stop as normal, bus arriving as normal but it getting delayed because of all the traffic problems – hence my advice of catching a bus before. Now, I know that’s not the most helpful of things to say, but we did not want people being stuck on buses when they should have been at their desk or getting hauled over the coals by their bosses for being late. Especially at a time when we are actively seeking employers to join our Get On Together travel plans.
A few months on, things have really settled down, and growth is already apparent. It’s disappointing that all our buses aren’t all blue and we’re still on a journey to drive standards higher. Things can’t change overnight, even though I really wish we could. It’s when we lose our ambition to be the best is when I’ll start getting worried. But we have an enthusiastic team at Bluestar, and we’ve lots of exciting things happening this year – smartcard introduction, Uni-Link coming on board, new vehicles for Bluestar 1 and the beneficiary of other vehicle movements around Go South Coast – and a few other bits and pieces that I can’t probably talk about! One of the best things someone said recently – he was a visitor from Group – was how friendly and accommodating the drivers are, when out on the road. A solid foundation to build upon.
Good to see the constructive feedback though, and to hear everyone’s views.
I hope that's covered everything - if you have any comments please feel free to email me at alex@bluestarbus.co.uk
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