virgintrains.com Celebrates First Birthday

Virgin Trains’ online offering www.virgintrains.com has reached its first birthday and is now a leading competitor in the train ticket booking field. Here we take a look back at its accomplishments and key learnings.

The site launched on November 11 2009 following a 12 month project to create a completely new site architecture from booking a ticket through to a fresh new design. Since it launched, research* has revealed that consumers agree that the website has a ‘professional, high quality and modern’ feel to it. In fact, two thirds of users rate the website as excellent or very good. Conversion rates to sale and site revenues increased dramatically year on year following the redesign.

Angela Oliver, Digital Manger at Virgin Trains, says: “We are delighted to receive such great feedback from our end users – particularly as we reach our first anniversary online. 

We have listened to suggestions and requests from our customers and have plans in the pipeline to introduce further improvements and added functionality to the site and in general around the booking process.”

The website allows people to book tickets, search for train times and to take advantage of numerous special offers, group discounts, First Class upgrades, no booking or credit cards charges as well as 2for1 tickets at hundreds of tourist attractions throughout the UK.

The latest version of the website can be viewed and used at www.virgintrains.com.

* Survey carried out by Virtual Surveys on behalf of Virgin Trains, August 2010.