More and more people are turning to the internet as a primary and inexpensive source of information – no phone calls to pay for and no need to wait in a call centre queue if you are unfortunate enough to make your enquiry at a busy time.
Recognising this, Omnibus have introduced OmniWEB, making it straightforward for an operator or local authority to display timetable information on their website. Using OmniTIMES data, OmniWEB will keep up to the minute information online, changing automatically whenever the data is altered. Additionally, users can search by SMS codes or any NaPTAN v2 fields – not just service numbers or location.
The ability to identify departures on all services from a specific stop makes OmniWEB extremely customer friendly. Not everybody wants to read a full timetable – indeed some people find them quite difficult to use – so OmniWEB can isolate the only information of interest to most bus users: the times of buses from their nearest stop. In this way, customers get the right information presented in a way that is relevant to their needs. This information can also be displayed in a printable format.
OmniWEB pages are created dynamically as the user queries the services, using a worldwide standard format (XHTML). This makes the website usable on mobile devices, and reduces the need for organisations to create static web pages to link together.