Overview
Iterative, data-driven improvement of Ruter's journey planner and website, combining analytics, testing and design sprints to help millions of monthly visitors find the right route.
Who This Is For
Public transport authorities and other public services whose websites carry millions of visits from people trying to complete one core task. This case is most useful if:
- much of your content does not address the problems users actually have
- your audience is unusually broad
- you want every design or content change measured against a clear KPI
- you need to explore new service concepts without committing engineering time too early
The Challenge
Ruter's website is visited millions of times a month by people looking for public transport information in the Oslo area. One of Ruter's core goals is preventing population growth from translating into more car use.
Ruter's own research had found that less than half of the content served through its channels addressed the problems its users had, across an unusually broad audience to design for.
Our Approach
The team now behind ECM.DEV managed the team of consultants delivering the engagement.
- Evidence from every angle: Google Analytics data, surveys, A/B tests and user testing combined, quantitative and qualitative together, to show what stood between users and their core task.
- A KPI for every change: each design change, content improvement or code optimisation had a measurable answer to whether it worked, for example whether it correctly showed the stops for the route a user wanted.
- Design sprints: a dedicated team ran Google Design Sprints in two-week cycles to explore future ticketing and payment concepts, prototyping and user-testing ideas before committing engineering time.
Impact
Journey searches up 19% in 2016, driven largely by an improved journey planner.
Less typing, more mobile. Use of "my location" in journey searches nearly doubled, and mobile journey searches rose 26% as the site became significantly more mobile-friendly.
Faster from idea to prototype. A Ruter business developer summed up the design-sprint work: "We'd talked about this for two years, and now we built it in five days."
When content serves one core task, every change can be measured against it. That is what turned opinion into evidence here.
Managed the Making Waves (later NoA Ignite) consulting team covering analytics, design, testing and content operations. Any public information referenced here is used for identification and does not imply endorsement.
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