Here’s an interesting article to get you started – Google’s Search Engine Optimization – Starter Guide.

Before going ahead, do remember that SEO would help your website gain better positioning in search results, but main focus of a website should be it’s content & users, not just search engines.

In order to get an an Online Railway Reservation (e-ticket), all one needs is the following:

• Internet enabled computer
• Identity proof (needs to be declared while booking and shown while travelling)
• Mode of payment (Credit card, debit card, net payment through account etc)
• Printer to print the e-ticket
• Age/Senior citizen proof (incase you took a ticket in Senior Citizen quota)

People who do not have access to internet can also make use of these websites by getting their tickets booked through local Internet Cafes, Agents etc that use online booking to reserve tickets for these passengers.

Here’s a list of some of the websites that offer online rail reservations. I’ve also tried to highlight some of the distinguishing features of each website.

Click on a logo for more information on that website

makemytrip

By far this website offers the best user experience. It is simple to use and provides you multiple options on the basic search page. You can get a fair enough idea of the availability status on the result page itself and don’t have to click on each train and view it’s status separately. However, there’s a catch here, the default search results that are displayed to the user are not the latest status’, but cached data i.e. data captured sometime back. To get the latest status, you will have to fetch the updated status for your particular choice. I would still say, that this is good approach, as in most cases, travellers prefer to check various trains and then pick up the ones’ that suit them. Here, you get an idea of status (time, availability, rates) of all the trains and can simply refresh status for the one’s that suit you.

Some of the distinguishing features of makemytrip as compared to it’s competitors:
- choice between oneway and return trip
- While searching if you select “flexible dates”, the search results will be displayed for 4 days.
- While searching if you select “flexible class”, the search results will be displayed for different classes, e.g. Sleeper, AC 3 Tier, AC 2 Tier etc
- After getting the search results, you can refine the data by selecting your preferred time of departure/arrival
-You can also save passenger details and avoid having to fill in these details every time you book rail tickets.

Make My Trip - Click on the picture to view a snapshot of the result page

IRCTC

This is the first online reservation portal that made life easy for internet buffs, followed by the aam janta. It started in the year 2002. The website is owned and managed by the Indian Government. The website is little slow as compared to some of it’s competitors. Once you make a search and select the train and Class of travel, it displays availability of future dates as well. It also provides rail tour packages and a whole lot of information on Indian Railways.

IRCTC Result page - Click on the picture to view a readable snapshot of the result page

cleartrip

Although not very impressive to look at. The website is crip and clean and much faster than most of it’s competitors. Does give you an option to change dates and travel class on the search result page. But the like most other sites, you need to fetch the status of each train individually.
One interesting feature of this website is that you can email the search result.

Cleartrip - Click on the picture to view a readable snapshot of the result page

yatra

They also provide you the option to alter Travel Date (Previous/Next) and Travel Class. Overall not a very impressive website as it is very slow. But does provide the service and is another option.

Yatra - Click on the picture to view a readable snapshot of the result page

ezeego

Although you need to get individual status of each train, ezeego offers couple of interesting features that non of the other sites does:
- View route
- Email Result for a specific train
The website has a lot of bugs, I tried to book a tickets 3 times, but failed! It is also relatively slow.

I came to know about these set of tools provided by comm100 which are open source and free of cost for any organization/business to use as customer service software. Following are the services which any business can use at comm100:

1. Live Chat Software
2. Email Tickets
3. Forum
4. Newsletter
5. Knowledge Base

All of these services are really useful to service your customer with their concerns, questions and problems. These are also very important for converting a prospect to your customer e.g. you can offer a prospect to live chat your operator who can help him to know more about your product/services.

I would like to focus more on Live chat software in this post because I liked it most and another reason is that similar services are paid services. I remember, that we used to pay considerable amount of money for these kind of software. I also liked that most of the management is web based and all the operators can also work from any workstation for Live chat. You can check complete list of features of Live chat but here I liked most:

1. Free of cost
2. Easy to start & setup, No installations(Web based).
3. Allows customizations
4. Clients available for Mobile clients like iPhone, Blackberry etc.

Before starting on using this for your business, you can also check set of screen shots provided by them. I will try to dig some more and will love to post more about other services.