"Train departures from your station" box gone from FGW website

[whole diary]

[Gordon the Blue Engine]

The "Train departures from your station" box has gone from the home page of the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website, and I can't find it anywhere else.  How are we supposed to check our train is running, on time etc before we set off for the station?

[chrisr_75]

www.nationalrail.co.uk perhaps? Same functionality on their homepage...

Or www.realtimetrains.co.uk

[grahame]

Get the three letter code for your station and put it onto this to replace ABC

http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ldbboard/dep/ABC

[chrisr_75]

Should also add that National Rail & FGW^▸ (First Great Western) both have decent mobile apps for both Apple iOS & Android with the functionality you desire if you have a smartphone or tablet...

[Fourbee]

I use www.traintimes.org.uk

No ads and the url can be customised as needed.

e.g. live departure board showing only trains from Reading to Paddington
www.traintimes.org.uk/live/rdg/pad

e.g. trains tomorrow from Reading to Paddington leaving at 1000
www.traintimes.org.uk/rdg/pad/1000/tomorrow

...and countless other variations described on the homepage

[Gordon the Blue Engine]

I suppose what I meant to ask is how does FGW^▸ (First Great Western) expect their customers to find out when their FGW trains are running? Is this not an important function of a train operator's website? I would have thought they want their customers to stay on their website rather than go hunting for information elsewhere, if only to ensure they don't find other places they can buy tickets. 

PS I'm not really a grumpy old Gordon.

[paul7575]

Live departures is still available from the 'travel advice' page:

https://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Home/contents/travel-advice

Is the tab to that page usually showing on the home page, or only when there are disruptions?

Paul

[Gordon the Blue Engine]

So it is.  FGW^▸ (First Great Western) are following the trend of populating their Home page with adverts rather than information.

They could perhaps think about the design and content of their JourneyCheck and Travel Advice pages, which you get to in different ways (ie button vs top menu), and I would have thought the "Train departures from your station" box should be part of the Live Information section on the Journeycheck page.  Odd also that the Live Information is on a different page from the "coloured rectangles" section, which is also real time info. 

It would be good to put all the real time info on one page, and forward travel advice on another page.

[eightf48544]

I suppose what I meant to ask is how does FGW^▸ (First Great Western) expect their customers to find out when their FGW trains are running? Is this not an important function of a train operator's website? I would have thought they want their customers to stay on their website rather than go hunting for information elsewhere, if only to ensure they don't find other places they can buy tickets. 

It's not only the FGW website that makes you dig around to find the relevant information amd even then don't give you all the facts. Many organisations sites are not easy to navigate preferring adverts to facts on the home page.

It just goes to show that designing webpages is an art not a science. Although more of those forgotten techniques  such as Organisation and Methods in designing the processes both on and off teh site and Ergonomics in implementing it would go along way to help. Then you wouldn't get FGW timetables with Blue on Blue print (way down the viasability scale!)

[grahame]

Perhaps the majority of people wanting specific information such as train times are assumed to be on mobile devices these days?   Or perhaps there's more business to be gained by pushing people past a series of advertising screens than by giving them what they want straight away?

[chrisr_75]

I think you've hit the nail on the head Graham. I would imagine analysis of website & mobile app traffic has been made and I suspect most of the train running information is probably gathered by mobile devices these days, while traffic through the full website is more likely made from the home or office environment where people, I suspect, are more likely to click on adverts.

Either way, I'm sure any changes aren't random and are most likely targetted at generating maximum revenue via the website!

[Gordon the Blue Engine]

I see that "Live Departures" is now back on FGW^▸ (First Great Western)'s Home Page.  Thank you to whoever fixed this.