Planning and booking a trip online has never been so easy. But in the fast-evolving landscape of digital retail, what was good enough yesterday might not meet the expectations of tomorrow’s customer.

With over 80 million train ticket sales per year, Voyages-sncf.com is Europe’s #1 train ticket retailer. The official distribution outlet of French rail operator SNCF, the site allows customers to map out their journeys through Europe, searching fares and schedules for hundreds of destinations.

But keeping the #1 spot means staying ahead of the curve — a hefty challenge in this new age of instant gratification and convenience where Generation Z dictates what’s next in terms of digital experiences.

Digital teams at Voyages-sncf.com know that understanding the needs of an increasingly tech-savvy community of travelers is key to improving the site’s conversion rate, and building up brand loyalty. And since one-third of all transactions processed by the site are made on mobile devices (two-thirds of their traffic distribution), it would seem that today’s travelers want to book their journeys while they are already on the go — an imperative that comes with its own set of challenges.

Here, the challenge is also an opportunity for growth. For Pascal Lannoo, head of digital customer experience at Voyages-sncf.com, harnessing the shift to mobile is central to the brand’s success. “How to leverage an awesome customer experience into a real business opportunity is really our daily focus at voyages-sncf.com,” says Lannoo.

WITH OVER 80 MILLION TRAIN TICKET SALES PER YEAR, VOYAGES-SNCF.COM IS EUROPE’S #1 TRAIN TICKET RETAILER.

Optimizing a platform to increase sales is easier said than done. And successfully adapting a site so it reflects the active lifestyle of today’s rail travel customers implies a pretty sophisticated understanding of said customers. What they want, how fast they want it, which hoops they will jump through, and which ones they won’t.

“Customer behavior is not something that you guess,” says Lannoo. “You really have to measure it and to observe it.” 

In order to build up a precise picture of how their customers were using the portal, Voyages-sncf.com used the ContentSquare digital experience insights platform — a tool that allows companies to visualize user navigation patterns and optimize to offer a seamless digital experience.

This level of in-depth, data-driven analysis helped teams identify friction points and flag areas that needed to be improved. Today, ContentSquare is a go-to tool for business and customer experience teams at Voyages-sncf.com, and more than 70 people across the company rely on the solution.

To watch the full interview of Pascal Lannoo, head of digital customer experience at Voyages-sncf.com, click here.

Born between 1996 and 2010, some are calling the new wave of consumers the Last Generation, others the Homeland Generation, but we at ContentSquare call them something else: Born to shop. And we’ve created a new eBook to teach you step by step how to connect with them.

This is the first generation of digital natives, raised on technology and understanding intuitively concepts and processes the rest of us had to learn through trial and error. 40% of Generation Z already self-identify as digital addicts. Furthermore, this new wave of internet citizens already commands 44 billion annually in the US alone— just from their allowance!

While this new era is just at the tip of the iceberg of their buying power, they’re already savvier and more discerning on the web than their predecessors. User experience is the language of Generation Z, with mobile and web interfaces their natural habitats.

Download our free eBook on how to attract and engage the new generation of consumers

On the one hand, they’re unforgiving when it comes to clunky or error-filled platforms, with 60% saying they won’t use an app or website that is too slow to load, and 62% saying they won’t use an app if it’s difficult to navigate.

On the other hand, they’re hungry for original, engaging digital experiences, and visit 62% more pages in a session than the rest of the population. Generation Z wants you to woo them, they want you to create a personal, immersive digital world for them to play— and shop— in.

This generation has been largely underestimated or dismissed by the media, but that is a mistake— and a costly one! This choosy, demanding new era already converts twice as much online as the rest of us.

To help you speak the language of Generation Z and capitalize on their buying power by offering a superior online shopping experience, we’ve created an eBook, Generation Z: The Coming of (Shopping Age), your A to Z guide on courting the new generation of consumers. The data is based on an analysis of  over 8 million user sessions from ContentSquare data in 2017 across 7 countries: The US, Belgium, Netherlands, the UK, Germany, France and Spain, across a number of industries.

We offer, in this report, all the steps you need to take to attract and engage Generation Z, with checklists of concrete actions you can implement right now. Forbes already praised our emphasis on telling your brand’s story through user experience— are you ready to roll out the red carpet for your new era of shoppers? They are more than ready for you.