CHALLENGE AND OBJECTIVE
Increase the conversion rate
Following the usability study of this hotel reservation platform, a project to design a new service offering was launched with the objective of achieving a rapid result, i.e. a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in 1 month.
With my collaboration, the client set up a mixed project team (UX Designer, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service) to propose a search and reservation path that is intuitive, efficient and in keeping with the image of the hotel group.
Intervention
Responsabilities
Duration of the project
Applied methodologies
- Co-design workshops
- Agile / Lean-UX project management
- Competors benchmark
- Personas and user journeys
- UX Business Model Canva
- Low and high definition prototyping
- User tests
- Reporting
METHODOLOGY
Lean UX
The client wanted to iterate quickly in a Lean-UX world, however the team was forced to run the project completely remotely (due to Covid-19 containment) which went against the Lean-UX principles. I then adapted the project management by combining Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile to achieve the goal of delivering an optimised MVP in less than a month.
Co-design workshops
Prior to the project launch, a benchmark of the competition and a survey on travel bookings were carried out. The results have been shared with the project team for inspiration.
The team’s co-design workshops enabled us to quickly define proto-personas and their customer journeys. So we proposed a new UX Business Model integrating solutions better adapted to users’ needs: simple and innovative search function, more legible presentation of results, clear and efficient booking path. The customer journey was then updated with these solutions.
Prototypes and user tests
A product backlog was defined by my and shared to the team to launch the design in Agile mode. 2 sprints with user tests were carried out to iteratively optimise the prototype.
The 2 sprints resulted in an innovative MVP, offering a pleasant experience and a high-performance reservation mode.
CONCLUSION
Report and recommendations
The MVP was highly regarded for its innovation, efficiency and simplicity. The small number of changes required as a result of testing the prototype in Sprint 2 meant that development could be launched in Sprint 3. It was recommended that A/B tests should be carried out at go-live on the key CTA wordings to measure the impact on conversion rates over a larger sample of users.
Re-design of a solution or service?
Prototyping and user testing allow a solution to be quickly pivoted and improved without impacting the development phase. The design phase is far from superfluous: it saves development time and limits the risk of user dissatisfaction.