At Ponderosa, we’ve worked on numerous travel, destination, and holiday-booking websites. As user expectations increase, my team is constantly challenged to create the most engaging, conversion-friendly experiences possible. Here’s a quick overview of our process for helping clients achieve better results.
Throughout, we need to remember that we’re trying to tell a story about what the destination experience is like, aka designing for delight, while eliminating any potential pain and frustration points.
1. UX Research
As with everything at Ponderosa, we’re obsessed with using research to create actionable insights early in the design process. For a client brand, this would mean living and breathing the experience, putting ourselves in the user’s shoes. On a recent project, the design team spent two days on holiday (nice work if you can get it!), absorbing the customer experience and mapping out any potential pain points.
We’d also use data and UX research tools to understand the existing online experience as opposed to the physical experience whilst linking up with our sister SEO agency, Rich, to understand search terms and mapping them to user needs.
2. Design Ideation
With the initial research phase complete, a regroup is needed to extract key insights and formulate clear, measurable goals for where we want to improve the experience. The team may employ workshops and paper prototypes as a team to map out design solutions. These can be built out into simple prototypes for light testing before creating higher-fidelity designs.
Typically, we’d look to create variations of wireframes (these are super-simple lo-fi designs) featuring content which we iterate with the content team into more finalised copy and imagery.
3. Brand Consideration
The visual look and feel of the digital experience is a key factor, the UX team work in tandem with the creative team to make sure the emotional feel of the website and content is on-brand, the imagery and copywriting tell the right story, and help with signposting and sweating the small stuff such as micro-copy on labels and other UI elements.
4. Development is Key
Throughout the iteration of the design phase, the development team are constantly involved, not only to make sure the website or application can be built but to add expertise in building websites that load as fast as possible, make sure the data can be pulled and push at lightning speeds, demanded by today’s users.
A key challenge is integrating various systems, such as booking, CRM, and payment, into the most seamless experience possible. This specialised skill is critical for developing successful projects.
5. Putting it all Together
As a designer there is no point putting anything into the world that is the same or worse than the thing it replaces – before we go live with a site update or build, we need to fully assess the new user experience and believe we have built something better – something that engages the customer more, drives towards the original goals more, is less frustrating to use and is more inclusive.
The thing with the website industry is there is no hiding place – everything can be measured, and we have near total visibility on how users interact with the products we build. It also true that nothing is perfect first time, so using our toolbox of data, user-testing and empathy, we can measure, improve and iterate.
UX Opportunities on travel websites
- Mobile experience – yes, it’s 2024, and we’re still encountering poor mobile experiences. On mobile, it’s typically 80% of your audience, folks, get it sorted!
- Is there a clear structure and navigation to the travel website? Users have mental models that need to be considered before re-inventing the wheel for the sake of it. Often, we encounter websites that have grown organically, and their structure is broken.
- Also, consider what the key tasks a given user is trying to achieve – being user-centric is key
- Is the website talking the customer’s language? So many times we user-test a website across the target demographic and technical or confusing terms are used which cause users to leave the site.
When envisioning holiday and destination websites, we must prioritise UX to convert casual browsers into paying customers. By focusing on user-centric design, transparency, and trust-building, businesses can create an engaging booking journey that drives success. If in doubt, start by empathising with your customers by commissioning simple user testing—it will most likely spark a discussion about the barriers present on your current site, and the journey starts from there.