Every improvement involves change but not every change is an improvement.

Travelling a lot by train, the national rail enquiries website is an invaluable source of train time information. The simple interface worked well and with a few clicks you had all the details you needed.

Now they’ve changed it as part of a revamp to the site. The result? It may look a bit better (can a train timetable site ever look cool?) but it’s clunkier as the text in the search boxes isn’t automatically over-typed, the drop down menus are slower and it’s not as easy just to get train times for today.

Why make life harder for customers? At the very least, make sure some of the team/web designers/public compare how it works before and after to be absolutely sure it’s as good as before.

Contrast that with Ocado online shopping. They make regular tweaks to the site and every one manages to make it easier and more satisfying to shop with them.

It’s a lesson for us all. Whatever the reasons you embark on making a change, make sure it ends up as something customers will agree is an improvement.

I’m off now to get the 0943.

Tags: change, customers, innovation, travel