Customers were calling into the call center to learn information that should have been readily available on the website. Our client also felt that the content and experience of the website was neither engaging nor inspiring and did not match the experience travellers had on their expeditions.
Our target audience were defined as two main user groups: agents and travellers. Within travellers, we defined sub-groups of past travellers who were amongst the older demographic keeping up to date with latest offers and deals, and polar enthusiasts looking for an adventure that fits their specific criteria and needs. Additionally, agents needed an easy way to filter expeditions and share the necessary information with their clients before deciding to book a trip.
We recommended that an analytics strategy be developed for our client's current website that would allow us to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of the new website design. I defined KPIs for measuring the success of the new website based on business objectives.
I prepared the interview scripts, recruited users and facilitated the interview sessions in person and over the phone with stakeholders from marketing, B2B, B2C and IT teams to gain insight into our client’s business objectives and success criteria., as well as users of the website to identify pain points, needs and areas of opportunities.
First impressions failed to communicate our clients' differentiators. Returning customers and agents rather call or refer to their booklets than struggling to find information about cabins, prices and availability of special activities on the website. We also observed that new visitors unfamiliar with polar regions didn't know where to start and find expeditions that matched their interests. We presented our findings to our client and created alignment where there were gaps between our stakeholder objectives and user needs.
Using our summary of pain points, I found best in class examples that addressed our problem areas and facilitated an energy dot workshop with our client where we reviewed and discussed examples and aligned on solutions to our problem areas.
Based on what I heard from our stakeholders about their vision for the look and feel and how they wanted customers to perceive their company, I generated a list of words and put them into buckets of what we wanted people to perceive, what we didn't want people to perceive and what we were neutral about. Using two artboards that our visual designer had prepared, I planned and distributed the test to our target audience using a screening questionnaire posted on various social media channels. I gathered responses and synthesized the results to help our visual designer and our client align on a look and feel for the refreshed website.
I facilitated a collaborative internal design studio to ideate solutions for an updated information architecture for the website and once we aligned on a solution, I created the updated IA maps and userflows for travellers and agents discovering expeditions, comparing options and booking a trip. Finally, I created all wireframes for the entire website considering the responsive behaviour and prepared the final presentation deck and presented our solution to our client.
Users who were not familiar with arctic and antarctic didn’t know how to navigate to any region or where to start their research, Agents were frustrated with the friction to find expeditions within a specific region. With the updated information architecture, we included all regions in the main navigation with a short description and an image representing the main highlight of the region.
Most factors that helped users choose an expedition were not available as a filter on the expeditions page, and there was no way for users to see accurate prices based on their cabin selections or see if the extra activities they are interested in are available for a specific departure date before proceeding to the booking flow. With an updated userflow, we revealed cabin prices and available activities and offered the most commonly asked questions from agents as filters.
One of the most common complaints we heard from both agents and new users was that they couldn't imagine what their experience will be like. Some returning customers explained that the highlight of their trip was their guides, the educational part of the trip, and the fact that the ships were small. None of this was being communicated within the content of the website. We updated the hero image on the landing page, and content in expedition pages to include information about the ships, the guides and images and videos of the trip’s highlights.
