Eurostar Group hopes that a new digital project will enable it to achieve its aim of 30 million passengers by 2030.
Leading analytics platform Contentsquare has partnered with Eurostar Group in the project called Delta.
Customer experience is at the heart of its strategy, and has already shown results in increased online sales and mobile app downloads.
It is through a faster, more seamless, and more accessible experience on the web and app that the group hopes to achieve its goal.
The benefits of a merger between the European high-speed rail networks Thalys and Eurostar to create Eurostar Group began to be seen on 1st October 2023 with the launch of a new website and a unified booking system.
Project Delta required significant alignment among Thalys and Eurostar teams, which was achieved by Contentsquare helping the group create a seamless user experience across all its platforms to make it easy for customers throughout the process of going to the eurostar.com website, to booking tickets.
Key areas of the project included:
- Ensuring a better search engine ranking, with over 1,200 optimised URLs.
- Redesigning the user interface with new branding and brand image for the website and mobile app.
- Adding new features to make it easier for users, including a new booking widget to book hotels and taxis.
- Integrating the German market
To ensure the project worked as designed, Eurostar conducted over 5000 user testing sessions.
The website was redesigned to tackle the frustration experienced by 50% of users.
This was overcome with Contentsquare's platform, which identifies obstacles to completing a purchase and customer retention by avoiding technical errors, excessively long loading times, and “rage clicks.”.
According to Google Lighthouse data, the new site is faster, with users considering it more seamless. There has been a three-point increase in the Customer Effort Score from 80 to 83 and the website conversion rate has increased from 4.6% to 5%.
The number of app downloads has also increased to more than 5,000 each day.
The next step in the project is to improve digital accessibility, with Eurostar's accessibility measurement tools showing a 95% reduction in errors on its homepage between September 2022 and March 2024.
The benefits of using Eurostar from the UK to mainland Europe were shown last year for the 2023 Rugby World Cup when 600,000 people travelled from London St Pancras to Paris Nord or Lille Europe.
As part of Eurostar's rebranding, the uniform accessories of Eurostar employees have been redesigned.
The new website and app have been pivotal in the merger between Eurostar and Thalys, marking the project's public debut and allowing customers to experience the new Eurostar for the very first time. The task was monumental: to redesign the website to connect France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany with a focus on retention and acquiring new users to achieve our target of 30 million passengers by 2030./
explains .
Laurent Bellan, Chief Technology & Process Optimization Officer of Eurostar
