Product updates: A quarterly summary

This quarter we’ve been focusing on two massive projects; re-branding Liftshare and moving our hosting services to Microsoft Azure!

AS WELL AS THIS, we’ve been adding features to our platform that our clients have asked for to make their scheme a success!

REBRAND

To mark our 20th birthday, and to stay relevant in the fast-moving tech world, Liftshare has undergone a rebrand and refresh, bringing us up to date:

Working with the award-winning creatives at newly set-up agency Ark, located near-by to our Norwich headquarters, the brand revolves around our new motto; Travel Happy.

Ali Clabburn, CEO of Liftshare said: “Somebody described Liftshare as being one of the UK’s greatest companies that no one has heard of. Unlike some players in the field we haven’t raised billions to spend on marketing – instead we’ve been tinkering away in the background, helping lots of companies do amazing things. If we are going to hit our ambitious target of doubling our social impact by 2020 then we need to change that.“

“We wanted to refresh our brand to help us achieve this. We put the consumer at the heart of everything we do and so we wanted our brand to emotionally connect with people rather than focus on function.”

Read more about our rebrand story here.

LIFTSHARE SITE UPDATES

We’ve made several changes to the user experience of our website, so that members find it easier to use and get the most out of joining Liftshare.

When members search for other members to share their journey with, we’ve added in some options to help them get more matches. These options appear when NO matches appear, but sometimes that one match doesn’t quite fit in with the same times, so more options will be handy and increase members changing of finding a Liftshare:

DASHBOARD – CLIENTS

We’ve used a new skin for our maps; the background of the map and the colors of the routes are both different:

The new map shows more green areas, giving more detail, and also has the roads in white, rather than the faded grey which merged major roads into the background on the old map. The blue of the ocean is much softer as well, giving precedence to the dark green journey lines.

We’ve added new filters/ options for our clients to use on their maps tab:

Journey routes: This shows the routes leading to destinations in an area.

All journeys live only: Now clients can see all of their live journeys in their scheme on a map.

Option for confirmed sharers: This is so clients can see how many routes in their scheme are actually being shared.

Journey routes – Show destinations – This shows the routes leading to destinations in an area. The destinations appear in a 2 mile radius of the location that’s searched for. You can drag the circle of the radius location to another area, and click search again to search destinations going INTO that area. See below showing journeys into Norwich:

The darker the line of the route, the more people are travelling along that route. We’ve shown this in a way that follows the road that the drivers actually using. It’s much tidier than multiple overlapping lines.

Parking Permits: Clients can now see when a member or admin has looked at the permit. This means if a member argues that they do not know how to get their parking permit, the client can check whether they have viewed it already:

MOVING TO MICROSOFT AZURE

Our clients data security is important to us. Earlier this year we decided to start building the process of moving our hosting services to Microsoft Azure; a flexible, enterprise-grade cloud computing platform. This move will utilise the best and most secure technologies out there to ensure our member and clients data security needs are met.

Ross Hewitt, Liftshare’s Chief Technical Officer, has said “The move to Microsoft Azure has big benefits in terms of data privacy and security for our members and clients”. The benefits of Liftshare moving to Microsoft Azure are as follows:

• Keep detailed access and change logs for all systems
• Encrypted data at rest
• Encrypted data in transit (between application, database and cache)
• Managed hosting – always have the latest security patches
• More secure – industry leaders
• Staying in the UK for our hosting
• And much, much more!

Read more about the move to Azure here

SMART PARKING

This is the technology that connects your Liftshare scheme, Parking Permits and Trip Authentication together into one package, and gives clients reassurance that employees are sharing their commute on a regular basis.

Smart Parking was created because we found our clients wanted daily proof that Liftshare permits were valid. When a Smart Parking permit is scanned, the parking attendant is shown a status screen of the Liftshare Teams permit in whether or not they have validated their trip that day.

Read more about the Smart Parking product here.

Get in touch with us for more information on Smart Parking on 01603 389321 or email tellmemore@liftshare.com.

ABOUT US

The Product Development team is a team of 6.

Ross Hewitt Chief Technology Officer, Sarah Roberts Head of Product, Jon Scutt Senior Designer and Developer, Laura Watling Membership, Campaigns and Communications Manager, Jono Woodliffe Developer and Ricky Swan Developer.

As a team, we’re always keen on getting ideas from our clients, partners and those in the transport and mobility sector in ways that we can help promote sharing in the community, drive sustainable transport and disrupt the transport sector with new innovative ideas.

WHATS NEW

As a Liftshare Scheme Manager, you can keep up to date with all our product releases by accessing your dashboard, and selecting UPDATES in the navigation pane on the left!

GET IN TOUCH

Have you got some ideas about additional features or functionality on our platform as a member or a client? Get in touch by tweeting us @Liftshare or emailing sarah@liftshare.com.