Designing a booking PROCESS that converts
WeTravel : Trip Details + Booking Flow
Product Strategy || User Research || Rapid Prototyping || UX + UI
PROJECT OVERVIEW:
DELIVERABLES:
A) Trip Details
After:
Before:
B) Booking Flow
Before:
After:
Now that you've the big picture, let's backtrack for some background ...
About WeTravel
WeTravel is an early stage startup with a mission to simplify group travel. Trip organizers can use the website to create, manage, and share trips. Travelers can discover and join existing trips. Originally, users were people who knew each other. E.g. yoga instructors organizing retreats or MBA students traveling over break.
The Problem
WeTravel's next goal was to expand their business model from invite-only trips to public trips. They came to us for help realigning their product strategy to fit both their public and private user's needs.
This boiled down to one Q: How do we allow users to feel comfortable booking a trip with random strangers? #StrangerDanger
My Role
I co-led and worked on the entire design cycle, from conducting User Research through to making final UX/UI decisions.
This included: leading team meetings, co-leading a design sprint and branding meeting, being the point-person for hi-fidelity prototyping & finalizing hi-fidelity designs.
And how did we get to our kick-ass solutions? Well, let me tell you all about ...
OUR DESIGN PROCESS
1. UNDERSTAND:
PERSONAS
To begin, we developed provisional personas to help us identify the needs & goals of our users. The WeTravel team also asked us to explore options for older travelers, so we built out a "older traveler" persona along with a "public user" persona.
CARD SORTING
We had five groups of two users conduct a card sorting exercise, hoping to converge on a common mental model and task flow for booking a group trip.
However, we found that users just had way too much information to sort through for this to work.
So next, we tried...
USABILITY TESTING THE CURRENT SITE
It turned out that our users had a lot to say about the existing site!
We uncovered many pains & gains through feedback and observation:
"Will it immediately book, or do I get to review the booking first?"
"I'm not sure if it's actually happening ... It's vague."
"[It felt like] I got taken advantage of."
2. DEFINING THE PROBLEM:
PAIN POINT SYNTHESIS & AFFINITY MAPPING
Next, we sorted each pain point into common themes and mapped them in an affinity mapping exercise.
This exercise revealed...
- 3 CORE PROBLEMS -
CLARITY
4/5 Users could not locate the info they needed.
CONFIDENCE
5/5 Users lacked confidence with their booking decision and had unanswered questions even after booking.
FLOW
4/5 Users felt confused with the booking flow.
These interdependent themes boiled down to an overall
LACK of TRUST & CONFIDENCE in WeTravel.
YIKES! ... So how do we fix this??
Eager to tackle the challenges, I formulated a set of hypotheses with my team ...
- OUR HYPOTHESIS -
CLARITY
Clarity in INFORMATION DESIGN will allow the traveler to find the information they need to feel CONFIDENT in booking with WeTravel.
FLOW
Breaking down the booking process into separate STEPS will increase the user's TRUST and CONFIDENCE in WeTravel.
CONFIDENCE
Compelling COPY and working functionality at the end of the booking flow will increase user ENGAGEMENT with the upselling options.
How do we measure this?
Next we translated our hypotheses into 5 KEY Questions to ask users at each testing round to allow us to measure our progress in a concrete way:
- 5 KEY QUESTIONS -
Clarity - Can users grasp important information within seconds?
Confidence - Do users feel confident in booking the trip?
Trust - Do users feel secure providing personal and sensitive information?
Engagement - Will users continue to engage with the website after booking?
Upselling - Will users pursue upselling & cross-selling options?
Armed with the data, we were ready to ideate all the ideas!
3. RAPID PROTOTYPING, TESTING & ITERATING
Our design process included a 3-hour-long Google Ventures Design Sprint to surface the best solutions.
We involved the founding WeTravel team, and even had the CEO doing Crazy 8 Sketches along with us!
( Crazy 8's = 1 minute sketches x 8. No Breaks. )
Ready, Set ... SKETCH !!!
We tested 5 Rounds of users in 5 Weeks to arrive at a polished MVP.
( Now THAT'S LEAN! )
With each iteration, we analyzed the the data and used it to inform our next design decisions.
Suffice it to say, we gleaned many valuable user insights along the way...
- MY TAKE-AWAYS -
If it's not SCANNABLE the user can't find the information
More DETAILED INFORMATION leads to CONFIDENCE in site credibility
TRUST is critical to beginning a purchase flow
PROFILES will be filled out if placed at the right TIME
TRUSTWORTHINESS means a longer booking flow
REVIEW BEFORE PURCHASE is a non-negotiable
EXCITEMENT (!!!) increases user engagement
Then, with fingers crossed, we ran the final test to validate our MVP...
4. VALIDATION
We saw significant improvements with all 5 Questions that we asked! (YAY!!)
In particular, CLARITY, CONFIDENCE & TRUST increased drastically.
"What you're selling is meeting new people and going on a trip together."
"I see everything I need to feel confident to confirm."
"I don't like to give information about myself, but I would fill [out the profile] if I'm going on a trip with strangers..."
THE FINAL PROTOTYPE
Trip Details Page
Booking Flow
Confirmation Page & Upselling
TEST THE INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE
PROMPT: Imagine that you want to visit Egypt and a friend has recommended this site. You just found a trip you like.
WeTravel was ecstatic with our design and will be shipping it by the end of the year! (WOOT!)
Client Testimonial:
"Mancy was absolutely fantastic to work with. She [worked] on WeTravel's design relaunch and showed great leadership, ... running meetings and mentoring more junior designers. She can develop innovative solutions and is fluent in design thinking. She was an asset in all phases of the product design lifecycle. She is a fast-learner and ... always shows a positive attitude."
-Johannes Köppel, CEO & Co-Founder of WeTravel