Today we are looking at and redesigning trip-booking websites, in order to improve their usability, by creating a realistic situation: organizing a family trip to one of the 7 wonders of the world: Petra, in Jordan.
First, we will be defining our target audience. We will then compare three main competitors in this domain, eventually choosing the most adapted one for our user in mind, here, KAYAK.com. We will test the website’s usability directly with real coinciding user profiles, discerning the main pain points to solve. Finally, we will offer a redesigning idea to fit users’ needs and expectations.
User Type
Family w/ children — 30–50 y/o(4)
Next year family vacation is going to be BIG. You want to take your children to know all the world’s wonders, but you need to start with one. Because your children have different needs and cannot keep up with only doing tourism, look for a good place to stay and relax. You assumed this is going to be quite an expense but you’re looking for opportunities if there would be any.
Destination: Petra, Jordan
Research
Nearest airport / most convenient airport to the destination:
> PDX to AMM, 2 stops, around $1000
Currency and exchange from your own currency:
> 1 Jordanian Dinar = $1.41
Medical needs: vaccination, visa, etc..:
> Recommended vaccinations are:
- Routine vaccines + Measles (for all travelers, especially children)
- Hepatitis A (for most travelers)
- Typhoid (for most travelers)
- Hepatitis B (for some travelers)
- Rabies (for some travelers)
- Yellow Fever (for some travelers)
Wardrobe recommendation:
> Liberal country, but stay mindful of the Jordanian culture:
- Nothing too revealing (front & back cleavage/form-fitting/too short bottoms)
- Cover head when visiting Muslim holy sites
- Shorts & short sleeves are ok for both men & women in tourist areas
- Leg-covering bottoms & long-sleeves are preferred for women in other areas
Days needed to visit attraction:
> Petra can be visited in just one day, however, once in Jordan, you might also want to see Wadi Rum, and/or the Dead Sea. To comfortably fit the visit of the three sites, and to discover the area/culture, 4 to 6 days are recommended.
Benchmarking
After performing a quick heuristic evaluation, I believe the best website to use for my targeted audience is KAYAK. Indeed, it has a clear and pleasing layout, numerous options to book an entire trip (flights, hotels, transportations, and attraction recommendations for different ty[es of sought after experiences.) They also offer to buy flights directly on their website, instead of having to go onto other travel companies’ websites, which can get confusing for a user that prefers convenience. Finally, it allows the user to save and/or share options, so he can then compare, or come back to its previous choices when needed,
Testing
10-second test: First impression of KAYAK.com homepage
On the first page of the site, through an iPad tablet (different than on a computer,) users seem to be attracted to the pictures more than the text, thus they believed it was a blog about traveling, or simply articles about nature/parks around the US.
Only one person knew it was a booking website, because of the name in the search bar.
Most of them also missed out on the different tools the website offers (like bookings of flights, hotels, rental cars…)
I think that if I had done the test with the home landing page on a computer, which directly gets the user to the flight booking page, the results of this test would have been different.
Observation use of KAYAK.com:
Task:
- Book a trip for your family (2 parents, 2 children)
- Fixed dates from Feb 1st to Feb 9th, 2021
- Flights from PDX to AMM
- Housing in Amman, Petra, (and Aqaba): 1 or 2 rooms per hotel/night
- Attractions you want to see: Petra, (the Dead Sea, and Wadi Rum)
- Can use KAYAK.com and a map
- You already know the medical needs/visa/cultural info
- Budget: $7,000
Overall, this was a long process. Indeed, booking a flight, plus hotels, plus figuring out other means of transportation takes time, and requires some previous knowledge about the country/cities the user wants to visit. Additionally, it is inevitable for the process of comparison of options to take time (and clicks!). Consequently, I will not go through it all.
However, I did find some recurrent pain points:
- No clear “Home page” button, or option to go back to search. The website opens new pages automatically, however, it is not easily understandable for users who are not used to such websites/options.
- No option to save/compare travel or hotel options when you don’t already have an account/without signing in (user had to take a screenshot to compare options.)
- When clicking on the “Sign In” button, not option to Sign Up.
- Search pages get very crowded with ads and information (got compared to Google Flights that’s a lot clearer.)
- A lot of filters are available (except “international chains,” and COVID safety-grades,) which is a plus, however, some details are omitted in the “view deal” pages (ex. Duration of flight, confusing because of time changes.)
- User has to give all information right away, even when just wants to do a quick search, etc… As it cannot be changed later on (ex. Numbers of passengers, or pay before choosing a seat on the plane.)
- Consequently, most users will end up on another website to finish their booking (which is sometimes automatic through KAYAK.com, but even when booking is available directly on the site, they might prefer to finish it elsewhere, or compare.)
- Some users wished for more trip options (like more transportations, chauffeurs, tips…) or at least more clearly stated on the website, (if already there, not seen.)
Redesign
With this website redesign, we will focus on enhancing the user’s experience while saving and comparing alternatives of flights, hotels, etc…
In order to address this pain point, in our redesign, we will add the opportunity to save any option as a guest on the website, rather than having to sign in. We also add a button to sign up in the “sign-in” pop-up window, to make it more convenient, as it was not there already.
We will also be adding a feature, directly in the “saved” tab, to compare selected options.
Following, are the redesigned wireframes.
A prototype user flow would go as follows:
Flights Home Page — Option 1 — Save Icon Button > Sign-In Pop-Up Window — Continue as Guest Button > Saved Cart Page — Select Options to Compare — Compare button > Comparison Page
What I learned through the process
I found that conducting a heuristic analysis was pretty challenging, indeed, it can be somewhat subjective, and I believe it requires to really use a website for the evaluation to truly be accurate.
Additionally, some of the issues and pain points we discern can be due to limitations that we are not aware of, so that is also something to take into account.
Finally I thought that was a good exercise, and it improved my user-understanding skills, as well as my interview/testing method.
