Eurostar Group, born from the merger of Thalys and Eurostar, has placed customer experience at the heart of its strategy through a digital transformation project called Delta. By delivering a faster, more seamless and more accessible experience on web and app, the European rail transport leader is on track to reach its ambitious goal of 30 million passengers by 2030. This strategy, in which the group partnered with leading analytics platform Contentsquare, has already yielded results, with increased online sales and mobile app downloads.
Customers experienced the merger of Thalys and Eurostar firsthand when a new website and a unified booking system were launched last October.
This project, named Delta internally, required significant alignment among internal teams. Contentsquare, a global leader in Digital Experience Analytics and expert in online user experience, helped the group create a seamless user experience across all its platforms.
“The new website and app have been pivotal in the merger between Eurostar and Thalys, marking the project’s public debut and allowing customers to experience the new Eurostar for the very first time. The task was monumental: to redesign the website to connect France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany with a focus on retention and acquiring new users to achieve our target of 30 million passengers by 2030.” explains Laurent Bellan, chief technology and process optimization officer of Eurostar.
Teams worked on optimizing the entire user journey, from arriving on the eurostar.com website to the booking phase. Key areas of focus included:
- Optimizing for better search engine ranking — with over 1,200 optimized URLs.
- Redesigning the interface, with the new branding and brand image, for the website and mobile app.
- Adding new features to optimize the customer journey, including a new booking widget to book hotels and taxis
- Integrating the German market to validate their approach, Eurostar conducted more than 5,000 user
- testing sessions.
The website was designed to provide a seamless customer experience, which required overcoming a major obstacle: frustration, reported in one out of two online visits, according to Contentsquare’s Digital Experience Benchmark 2024. Contentsquare’s platform allows brands to identify obstacles impacting conversion and customer retention (technical errors, excessively long loading times, “rage clicks,” and more.
According to Google Lighthouse data, the new site is faster and is considered more seamless by users, with a three-point increase to the Customer Effort Score, from 80 to 83. As a result, the website conversion rate has increased from 4.6% to 5%. On the mobile app side, the number of downloads is steadily increasing, with over 5,000 daily downloads.
“By eliminating all sources of frustration, particularly by working on page loading speed and optimizing content, Eurostar has placed the user experience at the heart of the travel experience,” said Jean-Christophe Pitié, chief marketing and partner officer at Contentsquare. “We are delighted to have been able to support them in this transformation.”
The next step in this project will be to strengthen efforts on digital accessibility, the groups say. Thanks to its accessibility measurement tools, Eurostar observed a 95% reduction in errors on its homepage in March compared to September 2022. By making accessibility a priority, Eurostar aims to make the journey with Eurostar even more inclusive.