Coach Hire Rebrand & Digital Transformation
Redefining a 50-year travel brand to strengthen recruitment, retain staff, and grow corporate contracts with a modernised identity and website.
Selwyns (Coach hire services)
Transportation
In progress (currently at design system stage before hifi)
UX & Product Designer (led discovery, research, design, prototyping)
Myself (UX), Development, CRM
Challenge
Rebuild the Selwyns brand and website to support recruitment, retention, and growth, while signalling value to private and corporate customers.
Selwyns Travel had an outdated brand and website that didn’t reflect their reputation or values. With over 100% driver turnover per year, recruitment and retention were critical. Meanwhile, their corporate contracts needed stronger positioning, while private hire remained the core business.
The project focus:
Strengthen recruitment by showing drivers Selwyns is a supportive, rewarding place to work.
Elevate brand perception to win more corporate clients.
Signal trust, quality, and reliability across all audiences.
Discovery process
This phase was designed to gather employee insights, user behaviours, and competitive benchmarks.
Activities included:
Stakeholder workshops (in-person): gathering business goals, pain points, and ambitions.
Employee survey: uncovering perceptions of brand strengths and weaknesses (e.g., reliability, service quality, and culture ranked top).
Hotjar analysis: understanding engagement patterns, scroll depth, drop-offs, device usage.
Competitor SWOT: identifying gaps in culture-driven recruitment, conversion optimisation, and brand distinctiveness.
Persona development: prioritising three audiences - Recruitment (drivers), Private Hire, Corporate Hire.
Mission & values alignment: defined a mission statement, value pillars, tone of voice, and brand archetypes (The Innocent primary, The Everyman secondary).
Research Insights
Employee culture = unique strength. Drivers highlighted pay, benefits, and community as differentiators. Website wasn’t reflecting this.
Recruitment pages underperforming. Mobile usage for Careers was nearly equal to desktop, but flows weren’t optimised for job seekers.
Corporate perception gap. Current site felt outdated and informal, not suited to high-value corporate clients.
Engagement issues. Homepage scroll depth low, short session times (<5 min), high exit rates from Fleet and Vacancies.
Brand Strategy Development
Mission statement: “We do private and contract coach hire for people and businesses of the UK, with drive, focus and respect to retain a community of valued drivers and happy customers.”
Tone of Voice: Professional, Trustworthy, Passionate, Upbeat.
Archetype: The Innocent - safe, optimistic, reliable. Supported by Everyman and Caregiver.
Visual direction: Clear, modern, welcoming. Blue/green/neutral palette for trust and warmth. Organic shapes balanced with clean structure.
UX & Design Solutions
Wireframes (mobile & desktop)
Prioritised driver recruitment flows on mobile.
Simplified quote request forms for customers.
Introduced About Us + Perks & Benefits pages.
CRO features like sticky booking button on key pages.
Internal Process Elevation
Improved Auto-layout practices (for scalable complex forms).
Built design system & component variants early to speed development.
Multi-step forms for recruitment + booking.
Documented files better to ensure clean dev handover.
Early impact
Though the project is mid-way, early feedback and testing showed:
Recruitment pages: clearer structure, stronger storytelling around perks and culture.
Corporate brand positioning: more confidence in pitching to higher-value contracts.
Internal workflows: designers & developers collaborating earlier, resulting in fewer blockers and faster iterations.
Next Steps
Move into high-fidelity prototypes.
Usability testing with drivers, corporate clients, and private hire users.
Launch refined website with CRO testing on booking and careers funnels.
Continue evolving the design system to support scalability.
Reflection
This project has been a test in balancing business goals with user needs, and in guiding a long-standing brand toward change while respecting its legacy. For me, it also became a chance to push internal processes—from autolayout discipline to stronger dev collaboration.
The outcome will be a modern, trustworthy, culture-driven brand that positions Selwyns as both a desirable employer and a professional coach provider.
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