UX Case Study – Thomas Cook - Holiday
Challenge - Discover pain points of the current portal and propose solutions to improve user experience, which in turn will accelerate leads and online sell of Holiday package.
About Client
Thomas Cook is online platform for holiday services which includes complete Holiday package as well as individual components like Flights, Hotels and Foreign exchange etc.
______________________________________________________________________________
Research
I first did research to understand the business goal, revenue model, and target audience of Thomas Cook. During user testing phase, I spoke to 4 call center agents who daily interact with customers and refer to Thomas Cook portal to solve customer’s queries. I spoke to 4 users who travel frequently in a year and 4 users who have browsed through the Portal but not booked a holiday. Some of the questions asked to user were:
The research from analytics was indicating that the users from mobile and tab were increasing rapidly. The visitors in the age group of 21-30 were increasing in recent years. The packages to cater this type of audience were missing on the portal.
______________________________________________________________________________
Synthesize
Affinity Map
I synthesis my findings under two categories based on the main business functions – generate lead or book vacation. The findings from my research were then organized on an affinity map to better understand their relationship to each other and to determine priorities moving forward in the process.
Base on the study, here are the 6 problems I decided to focus on:
1. Difficult to get clear information about package details, costing and booking payment
2. Holidays like Honeymoon, Wildlife, Youth Special, Luxury etc. were not easily findable
3. User had difficulty to locate and fill-in the lead form
4. Difficult to compare the Holiday package for final decision
5. Difficult to access the portal from mobile and tab
6. Limited space to showcase holiday offers upfront
Persona
To help communicate information about users that I collected during research, I created a provisional persona.
Ideate
Task Flow
To better understand where in the process users were having trouble, I highlighted the areas in blue where most users struggled, where I want to focus most during the redesign.
Lo-Fi Sketches
Based on the established pain points, I sketched multiple options to test and see how by initiating minimal changes to optimize the user experience. I decided to move ahead with responsive website with mobile first approach as the website had to make accessible from different devices.
Prototype
Hi-Fi Prototype
Moving forward with the process, I turned my Lo-Fi sketches into Hi-Fi prototypes. Below is the screen comparison showing before and after side by side.
Clickable Prototype
Clickable Prototype was created to test my ideas and validate the redesign. It was extremely helpful for me to test users on the tasks that I focused on to gain realistic insights, also understand what worked well and what requires further improvement.
______________________________________________________________________________
Validate
After user research, analysis and redesign, I was able to validate the assumptions and changes I had made. I did this by testing my clickable prototype with eight new users. Some alterations were made after the prototype.
1. Calculate Price tab was moved as first tab, and users could easily fill in the form
2. Access to Query form was easier and it also populated after certain inactive time
3. Information of Product detail page was clear to users
4. Users could easily locate the offers
______________________________________________________________________________
Outcome
The website went live in Jan 2018, and shown remarkable results.
1. The visitor to lead ratio increased by 12% in the first three months of go live.
2. The online bookings increased by 3%.
3. The bounce rate reduced by 11% from product detail page .
4. The leads increased by 17% on Honeymoon packages.
After Thoughts
This UX project has been a challenging and rewarding experience for me. At the beginning, I was overwhelmed by the idea of getting out into the "wild" and talking to strangers for the usability testings. However, it turned out to be an amazing experience to understand users and find out what makes the tick.
