All to often these days perfectly good web sites are being replaced by ‘new’ sites which supposedly offers lots of bells and whistles but are actually really awkward to use and more often than not less useful than the sites they replaced. Plymouth Citybus, Traveline and First have all suffered from this over the years. The Stagecoach issue is slightly different in that the current web site is an improvement on what was before, but it is still unnecessarily hard work to find what you need.
One local operator has redesigned their web site and has achieved the holy grail - a site which just works! Its easy to find what you want and its all very simple.
So lets see how Country Bus manage to get so much right:
very simple clean home page with links to timetables maps etc along the top. This is where it usually starts to go down hill…
Timetables
Nothing fancy, just a list of all their services in number order with no distractions.
so lets see what the 75 timetable gives us
Nice and simple and clean. There is even the ability to download a PDF of a print friendly version of the timetable. Excellent!
Now it would be nice to have a link on this page to go to the map - but otherwise it has everything you need.
Talking of maps - the maps link goes to a page that looks exactly the same as the timetable page - a very clean list of all their services including the 75 - so lets see what these maps look like
Again, a nice clean look with no distractions like massive bus stop icons that obscure most of the map (Traveline!). The web site seems to contain maps for all of their services too - another bonus.
You can get the latest news where they explain service changes. All too often this is missing from the smaller operators sites.
and there is another page of live service updates
once again, keeping everything very clean and simple. I have also checked the site on my mobile - and again - it all just works. Probably the only thing which is missing from the site is bus fare information but that's missing from most operators anyway.
Congratulations to Country Bus - they have managed what so many operators big and small just don't get close to.
a decent web site that just works
http://countrybusdevon.co.uk/
Country Bus wisely don't have pictures on their web site - so here is one of mine!
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