An app for 7.6 million ferry passengers
Having a considerable mobile customer base, Scandlines wanted to offer their passengers an easy, digital way to plan their journeys. The potential scale of the project was huge. With 7.6 million people and nearly 2 million private cars travelling with Scandlines every year, it was only natural for the Scandinavian ferry company to develop an app that made planning, booking, and checking-in as easy as possible. Scandlines had previously developed a loyalty-programme app for existing customers. But, as more and more customers started planning trips on their mobile phones, there was a greater need for an app with swift booking options and alternative ferry routes. The challenge for Nodes was to merge the existing loyalty app with a modern booking platform, giving passengers instant access to all of Scandlines’s services.
Turning a complex process into a user-friendly app
One of the major challenges with travel apps is the sheer complexity of the booking process. Scandlines has more than 42,000 ferry crossings every year. In addition, there are several ticket options, members-only offers, and a loyalty programme, which tracks every point earned by each of its 550,000 members. That’s a lot of people and a lot of transactions.
Working closely with Scandlines’s chief architect and product owner, Nodes designed a bookingflow that can split into different paths, while making sure data is consistent throughout the whole process. To make it even more simple, Nodes added a key feature: the digital ticket barcode. Instead of wasting time with paper tickets, passengers can access their barcode directly in the app. Plus, they also integrated an easy-to-use payment feature for every passenger.
Making journey planning easy and pain-free
The result is a user-friendly app that helps passengers choose the right ferry route, book a ticket, and subscribe to a loyalty programme. All with an elegant and intuitive interface.
Rune Andresen, e-commerce manager at Scandlines, put it best: “With this new app, we’ve listened to our passengers and made it easy to plan the journey with Scandlines digitally. Everything from booking to fast check-in and subsequent purchases through our SMILE-loyalty programme is combined into one joint solution ready to use for every passenger.”