National Rail is the brand name for the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC). ATOC members include 24 privately owned Train Operating Companies (TOC’s) and play’s a fundamental role in co-ordinating the activities of the various companies.

Railway travel is one of the primary forms of transport in the United Kingdom today. The British Railway service is the oldest in the world and has provided an exceptional service since it’s inception in the early 19th Century. Many rail users still depend on this form of transport to get from one place to the next and would be left stranded without it. In order to use the rail system most effectively rail users require up to the minute information.

www.nationalrail.co.uk is the official website of National Rail and is tasked with the responsibility of providing timely information with regards to train schedules, service updates and possible disruptions. They also provide a journey planning service and make use of the same data system as National Rail’s telephonic information service.

An analysis of the National Rail website demonstrates the use of the Internet in improving the lives of millions of users by providing them with practical tools and valuable information.

The National Rail Enquiries website makes use of a white background with navy blue text. Light blue shading is used in places adding more activity to the site. One also observes just a touch of burgundy employed very sparingly for highlighting purposes only. Other than that, not much colour has been used leaving the site lacking in visual appeal. The minimal use of images adds to this lack of excitement. On the other hand, information is very easy to find as a result of good structure, and straightforward presentation making for an easy if not pleasant user experience.

Navigation re-enforces this sense of simplicity. Users are able to navigate easily within the website due to the presence of navigational tools such as menus, labels and lists as well as additional search features in the form of a site help function as well as site search.

Functionality on www.nationalrail.co.uk is better than expected. All the generally expected functions have been provided as well a few additional ones which make for a rich user experience and could be the biggest attraction the site has to offer. The journey planner, live departures and arrivals as well as hotel bookings are examples of the useful tools available on this website. Passenger services are also available on mobile phones making it very easy for users to view their journey details with ease and convenience.

Although journeys can be planned and researched at the National Rail Enquiries website tickets cannot be purchased online at www.nationalrail.co.uk. The site does however provide links to the appropriate websites for ticket purchases.

The site loads rather slowly which could compromise the number of visitors who will return to use the site frequently. There are no HTLM errors and no broken links could be found. Appropriate keywords are being utilised however keyword densities could also be improved. The domain name contains the brand name which will attract many visitors and aids search engine ranking.

www.nationalrail.co.uk has a high search engine inclusion as well a high link popularity score. This indicates that many sites link to the website and also that the various search engines reference the site frequently. This is common with highly authoritative websites such as nationalrail.co.uk where one can also expect a low Alexa traffic rank. A low Alexa traffic will show that they attract large numbers of traffic. National Rails Alexa traffic rank at 2996 satisfies this expectation. They also boast 2178 incoming links.

Impressive features of National Rail’s website include their highly informative content, excellent content structure and superb functionality. The general appearance and loading time could be improved. There are also a number of Internet marketing techniques which could be employed to provide users with a better experience as well to attract more visitors. They could, for instance, provide users with options to email schedules and journey plans so as to improve viral or word of mouth marketing. The site would benefit greatly from the provision of more interactive features which include the use multimedia for improved user engagement.

National Rail enquiries website provides its visitors with valuable information and number of practical tools which make using the rail system much simpler and more convenient. New media technology has been used to simplify what are normally complex and time consuming tasks.