Those of us corporately responsible for commercial matters may recall original websites. We thought our early end results were the height of sophistication. Yet, back then, we didn’t really understand their usefulness.
We spent time and energy debating what they were for exactly (or not, as the case may be). Were early websites a place to find information? To offer gimmicks & competitions? To offer real time information—as we initially thought? To promote a product? To sell a ticket? Would they catch on? Commercial departments didn’t have answers to these questions. They certainly have now. The web is by far the preferred contact point for our customers.
When you look at modern, well-presented, interactive, sales-driven sites and compare them with older examples, it’s hard not to cringe a little, even though all we did was use the simple tools at our disposal (or, generally, it wasn’t us but some agent down the road who could hard code HTML).
Bournemouth Transport Ltd t/a
Yellow Buses was, surprisingly, an early internet adopter. It started life online way back in 1998. This month,
Transdev Yellow Buses has undergone a minor refresh. This is the
third such
development since
Transdev took on Bournemouth. Things have moved on considerably.
The recent change is less of a re-write than when the site got pretty. Some of the long list of links at the foot of the old pages have mercifully gone. It’s simply concentrated on what the site ought to have—good quality information on getting about. It’s now even better laid out (though the front page has far too many words, IMO) but does lack some of the instant appeal of those created by those under the Best of Impressions.
TYB’s new site has replaced references to “index to places served” with “destinations”. “Destinations” sounds a little more like traffic objectives rather than actual places served and it’s sad that the good eating, shopping and visitor objectives in previous iterations now seem missing.
Of particular note is a newly developed online blog, written by long standing marketing head
Jenni Wilkinson. It started on 12th November and thus far has three entries. The first was on the subject of
Boxing Day and here unashamedly takes her cue from the
Omnibuses Blog: “That brings me to the most recent definition of Boxing Day that I have heard, no, it’s not real, but it did make me laugh out loud when I read it. In the writer’s youth, the family would spend time together watching the Box as there was little else to do, hence the name Boxing Day… derived from the TV”.
How does she know it’s not real?
i Transdev Yellow Buses Blog
Those of us corporately responsible for commercial matters may recall original websites. We thought our early end results were the height of sophistication. Yet, back then, we didn’t really understand their usefulness. We spent time and energy debating what they were for exactly (or not, as the case may be). Were early websites a place to find information? To offer gimmicks & competitions? To offer real time information—as we initially thought? To promote a product? To sell a ticket? Would they catch on? Commercial departments didn’t have answers to these questions. They certainly have now. The web is by far the preferred contact point for our customers.
When you look at modern, well-presented, interactive, sales-driven sites and compare them with older examples, it’s hard not to cringe a little, even though all we did was use the simple tools at our disposal (or, generally, it wasn’t us but some agent down the road who could hard code HTML).
Bournemouth Transport Ltd t/a Yellow Buses was, surprisingly, an early internet adopter. It started life online way back in 1998. This month, Transdev Yellow Buses has undergone a minor refresh. This is the third such development since Transdev took on Bournemouth. Things have moved on considerably.
The recent change is less of a re-write than when the site got pretty. Some of the long list of links at the foot of the old pages have mercifully gone. It’s simply concentrated on what the site ought to have—good quality information on getting about. It’s now even better laid out (though the front page has far too many words, IMO) but does lack some of the instant appeal of those created by those under the Best of Impressions.
TYB’s new site has replaced references to “index to places served” with “destinations”. “Destinations” sounds a little more like traffic objectives rather than actual places served and it’s sad that the good eating, shopping and visitor objectives in previous iterations now seem missing.
Of particular note is a newly developed online blog, written by long standing marketing head Jenni Wilkinson. It started on 12th November and thus far has three entries. The first was on the subject of Boxing Day and here unashamedly takes her cue from the Omnibuses Blog: 
i Transdev Yellow Buses Blog
1 comments:
Just proves how far the internet has come!
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