The Challenge
A Major Advisory. Invisible to the Riders Who Needed It Most.
NJ Transit issued a significant service advisory affecting thousands of daily commuters. They posted it on their website, sent emails to subscribed riders, and updated their social channels. But there was a fundamental gap: the riders most affected — those actively planning a trip at that moment — never saw it.
These are riders mid-session on the NJ Transit website, checking schedules and buying tickets. They're exactly the audience the advisory was meant to reach. Yet the standard advisory banner sat in a corner of the page, invisible to anyone with task-focused tunnel vision.
When asked "Were you aware there is an active service advisory affecting your trip?" — nearly 3 in 4 active trip planners said no.
The Solution
Meet Riders in the Moment They're Making Decisions
Pulse Insights put a Pulse agent on NJ Transit's trip-planning pages. Rather than a passive banner, a small card appeared in the page at the moment a rider was actively working with schedules or ticketing.
The card asked a single, direct question: "Were you aware there is an active service advisory affecting your trip?" Each response led to a tailored next step — unaware riders saw the advisory inline, aware riders dismissed it, and riders without alerts could sign up immediately.
No development work for NJ Transit. Our build took days; NJ Transit's approvals set the date. The card appeared only when the signs pointed to active trip planning.
"Pulse Insights gave us a way to reach riders exactly when they're making decisions — not after the fact. The results speak for themselves."
— Vaughan Williams, CMO, NJ TransitResults
40% Click-Through. Real Action at Scale.
The numbers validated what NJ Transit suspected: riders are highly receptive to relevant, timely information when it appears in the right context. Delivery method matters as much as the message itself.
Click-through rate on the advisory alert — driven by unaware riders clicking through to the full advisory
Overall engagement rate with the card across all targeted trip-planning sessions
End-to-end conversion rate — from the card appearing to a completed next step
Of alert sign-up clicks, from the 8% of riders who tapped “Sign me up”
Why It Matters
Awareness Failures Cost Trust — and Ridership
When riders encounter a disrupted journey they didn't know about, the experience erodes confidence in the transit system itself. It's not just an inconvenience — it's a data point that shapes whether they choose transit next time.
NJ Transit's challenge isn't unique. Every transit agency publishes advisories through the same playbook: banners, emails, social posts. But these channels reach people before or after the decision moment, not during it. Pulse Insights shifts communication to the moment of highest relevance — when the rider is already on the site, already planning, already in the mindset to act.
The 40% click-through rate isn't a vanity metric. It represents real riders who got information they would otherwise have missed, and made better decisions because of it.
Industry Context
What the Research Says About Rider Information Needs
NJ Transit's 73% unawareness rate isn't a failure of communication effort — it's a structural pattern across public transit. Multiple independent studies point to the same underlying dynamic.
Transit App Rider Happiness Benchmarking: Real-time information availability is consistently the top driver of rider satisfaction across North American transit systems — outranking frequency, cleanliness, and cost.
TransitCenter, Who's On Board: Riders who receive accurate, timely service updates are significantly more likely to report high satisfaction and continue using transit — even when disruptions occur.
SFMTA Abandonment Threshold Research: Only 14% of riders would wait 20 minutes without real-time information. When riders don't know what's happening, most abandon the journey entirely — a recoverable behavior if they'd had the information in time.
The pattern is clear: riders don't avoid disrupted service because of the disruption — they avoid it because they couldn't adapt. The information gap is the operational problem worth solving.
How It Works
One JavaScript Tag. No Development Work for NJ Transit.
Pulse agents run on a single lightweight JavaScript tag — the same model as any analytics tool. There was no development work for NJ Transit: our build took days, and NJ Transit's approvals set the date. The production agent that followed goes further, checking each rider's trip against live service alerts; connecting to a client's own data like that is a custom build we scope together.
Dynamic Behavioral Targeting
The platform detects behavioral signals indicating active trip planning — schedule lookups, fare searches, route comparisons — and shows the card only in matching sessions.
A Card in the Page
The card sits within the existing page flow. It asks one focused question and takes each rider to the right next step based on their answer.
24/7 Automated Operation
Once approved, the agent runs on its own. Advisory content updates from the Pulse dashboard without touching page code. When the advisory expires, the card stops appearing.
Close the Awareness Gap for Your Riders
See how Pulse Insights surfaces critical information to the riders who need it — exactly when they're making decisions on your site.
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