Case study #4

Grand Central

About Grand Central Rail

Grand Central Railway Company was established in Spring 2000 for the purpose of creating a new cross-Pennine passenger service linking Manchester and Newcastle.

Objectives

The client planned a comprehensive media campaign to coincide with their formal application to the UK Rail Regulator. A presence on the web was essential to handle interaction with the rail community during the eighteen week public consultation period.

It was also suggested that the web site would, upon launch of the passenger service, be required to handle ticketing, and that this should be taken in to account in the site's design.

Strategy

Traffic was initially to be driven to the web site via the client's off-line direct mailing list. A consistent high quality look and feel was essential to promote a professional image.

Planned media activities during the consultation period which would have an impact or application on the web site included:

· Presentations to local government and other key parties · Localised events at stops along the planned service route · End-to-end contact management

Implementation

Targeted audience research provided an insight into the requirements of the site's control group of initial end users. Using this information, a special lightweight HTML template was implemented resulting in straightforward access to information and exceptional download performance.

To fulfil the end-to-end contact management requirement, an intelligent agent was developed to allow news on the site to be kept constantly up to date.

This includes an embargo facility via which information may be posted in advance of its 'go-live' date, but will only be distributed once a specified embargo time has passed.

With the possibility of the web site handling ticketing functions (cf. EasyJet) the site was deployed into an environment capable of providing enterprise database functions to avoid headaches at a later date.