Innovative Public Transit SAAS Solution

— Public Transit SAAS Platform

SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE

MockPhone-1-Schedules

 

 

— Product Development

Mobile & App Development

Web, UI, UX Design

/ 01

Introduction

eTransit™, a SAAS product developed by Station Four, is an industry first solution that helps public transportation agencies drive consistent marketing and communication efforts. To pull this off, we had to use all of our resources from graphic design, deep technical understandings of transit toolsets and data, marketing strategy, and web and mobile UI/UX design and development.

downtown-route-window

/ 02

The Challenge

Public transportation agencies are trying to do a lot with very little. Because of this, we focused on the tools and resources that would add the most value as quickly as possible. Measurable audience engagement is predicated on useable, digital interfaces. Our first challenge was focusing on the riders:

  • Created a digital fixed-route and schedules system.
  • Added solutions for micro-transit and para-transit
  • Created marketing engagement points that were tied to operations data for routes & service alerts
desktop-mockup-websitehub-2

/ 03

The Build

Creating one system to serve multiple customers is a heavy lift. A multi-tenant application has to be flexible enough to serve all customers but rigid enough to control the experience across all. Balancing those two opposing forces is key.

  • Heavy usage of cloud computing and cloud based storage
  • Dev Ops work planning and pipeline management
  • Web and mobile responsive user interfaces. 

/ 04

Brand Continuity

Each public transportation agency's brand is unique. We had to create a solution that, from a design standpoint, was thoroughly thought out and yet flexible enough to apply to multiple brands without losing too much continuity. 

  • Tenant based CSS and style frameworks
  • Domain relative detection of tenant accounts
  • Establishment of brand guidelines to facilitate tenant onboarding
brand

/ 05

Dynamic, User-Specific Results

Both marketing communications preferences and website copy is customized based upon the user in eTransit™. In order to achieve this, we had to employ advanced marketing techniques to coordinate data across multiple systems and across multiple vendors via APIs. 

WH-Desktop-1
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/ 06

Mobile-Focused Experience

For rider related visits, upwards of 80% of transit website traffic is from mobile a mobile device. With that in mind, creating a functional and performant experience for the audience required a mobile-first mindset. This was achieved by focusing on the User Experience aspects of the design process and performing iterative testing to ensure that we got it just right. 

RH-Zone-Fixed
etr-device-wall

/ 07

Inclusive Accessible Design for All Users

An accessible product is never really achieved. Accessibility is a mindset and dedication toward inclusivity that starts and the beginning of the product design process. We bake accessibility into everything we do and perform testing to ensure that as the product changes, we do not introduce any aspects that will make our products less universally accessible. 

ETR-tablet-mock-3img-sbs

/ 08

Getting the Word Out to the Public

So you've got a new product. Now what? S4 paired everything we know about sales and marketing to execute a go-to-market strategy. This consisted of intelligent targeting based on acquired CRM data, account-based marketing, and coordinated networking initiatives, all tied into HubSpot Marketing, Sales, and Website Hubs. 

MockTablet-2-Procurement-1
  • MockTablet-2-Schedules-2
  • MockComputer-Schedules
  • MockTablet-1-Procurement - SS Full
  • MockTablet-1-Schedules-2-1
  • MockPhone-3-Schedules

/ 09

Advanced Marketing Technology

We used our decades of experience writing software for the marketing technology (MARTECH) space to create eTransit™. Our implementation involved extensive use and integration with the Microsoft Azure cloud ecosystem and also with Microsoft based technologies. 

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