NS (Dutch Rail): Improving online conversions

NS (Dutch Rail) is the largest railway company of the Netherlands. NS transports almost one million Dutch travelers every day. The NS railway network covers around 300 railway stations across the Netherlands. Over the last years NS has been actively improving its online visibility and services. Digital sales and services have become increasingly important. NS websites link directly to its social media accounts and NS has set up a interactive webcare policy.

Challenge

The digital team came across Mopinion during a period when the team was looking to improve online features of the website, especially the online sales funnels. NS had already adopted usability research to measure the user friendliness of its website. To continuously receive and analyse customer feedback NS initiated a programme with Mopinion’s customer feedback software.

NS aimed to optimise the e-tickets website as more and more customers are migrating from traditional to online purchasing methods. Issues on the website lead directly to a decrease in online sales and customer satisfaction. A side-effect is that the pressure on the customer service department increases, which leads to higher costs.

Another online sales process that needed further optimisation was the ordering funnel for NS-business cards. For the same reason as stated before.

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Solution

To optimise the website and improve online conversions NS continuously captured feedback on both ordering funnels. Through the Mopinion reporting platform NS received easily accessible insights from visitors and regular customers. Because Mopinion software analysed the feedback in real-time and email notifications were routed to the right people and departments, NS was able to directly respond to feedback and ensure that appropriate action was taken.

Results

Thanks to the insights provided by Mopinion, NS has been able to resolve many issues on the website. The data consisted mainly of feedback about malfunctioning features and designs preventing a successful completion of the ordering funnel. By capturing these crucial insights NS has been able to improve the website to ensure customers can buy e-tickets without any issues. NS is satisfied with the feedback items as its vital to optimise online conversions. NS has noted that through these changes their visitor exit rates dropped before and during the ordering process.