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GWR 2
Great Western Railway

Industrial | Sitecore personalisation and enhancement

Great Western Railway has one of the largest and most complex rail networks in the UK, carrying one and a half million passengers every week on 9,000 services and calling at 276 stations. They are the only UK rail company to operate high-speed, inter-city, commuter, regional and sleeper services.

Beautiful Shot Train Passing Bridge Sunny Day

The Challenge

Great Western sought ClerkWell's help to enhance their use of Sitecore personalisation. They had invested in the platform for its rich capabilities, but had no idea how to leverage the functionality or where to start with their strategy. Great Western's website is vital to its customers and their business. In an average week, it receives over 200,000 visitors and generates over 1 million pounds of revenue.

 

Their core goals were more relevant website personalisation, improved passenger information during disruption (PIDD) and website optimisation including performance improvements and reliability. 

The Approach

ClerksWell created a personalisation roadmap which identified the fixes required to track the value of a customers and their behaviour, as well as create real-time personalisation. 

 

We designed the UX and look and feel of the PIDD project, designing the information in an easy to use and mobile-friendly interface to engage all customers. Feeds from National Rail and Rainbow Boards Journey Checker were consolidated to ensure up to date travel information was displayed on the website.

 

We also upgraded their website to a newer version of Sitecore and carried out a comprehensive technical review to address live issues and performance and stability issues.

The Impact

The Great Western Railway website saw a huge uptake in engagement after ClerksWell's enhancements and changes. Personalisation increased conversions on the homepage by three times, and mobile engagement increased by 56% since the PIDD project implementation.

 

The website is now stable, much faster and has a clear roadmap for continued optimisations.

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Industry Perspective

“ClerksWell used website personalisation to create a seamless and positive customer experience, which brought us customer loyalty, engagement and an increase in ROI. Their impressive workshops and clear understanding of our complex personas convinced us that they are the right partners to help develop our personalisation strategy.”

Jason Ali

Digital Marketing Manager, GWR

Related Work

A selection of related projects that show how we apply the same thinking across different organisations.

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