OVERVIEW
PickYourTrail is an Indian company providing customised tours and holidays. The challenge was to improve the user experience for the web product to drive more leads and conversions. The performance could be measured through UX metrics like heat-maps, scroll rate (to the bottom of the page) and number of new accounts created.
DELIVERABLES
Design Suggestions
Supporting Research Data
PROCESS
The participants were given three specific tasks while using the product and their screens were recorded over Zoom.
PLATFORM
Web
PARTICIPANTS
Since PickYour Trail appeals to a global audience, initial testing participants are diverse in nature from different countries across the globe. People aged between 18-30 have been selected solely because they have been the primary personas for the company.
*Participants names have been coded to value their privacy and anonymity.
#2010 - The Coder
22 | India | B.E (Computer Science) | Web Developer
Technology Expertise - 9/10
#1234 - The Party Animal
26 | Canada | B.Com, M.Com | Accountant
Technology Expertise - 7/10
#7888 - The Leader
23 | India | B.A, M.A (Political Science) | Student
Technology Expertise - 8.5/10
#2022 - The Banker
29 | UK | B.E, M.S (Financial Mathematics) | Investment Banker
Technology Expertise - 8/10
#3696 - The Automobile Freak
32 | Germany | B.E, M.S (Automobile Design) | Service Engineer
Technology Expertise - 6/10
Participants were given three specific tasks and their process was recorded.
TASK-1 (COMPLETION RATE - 60%)
"Imagine you are planning to go to Bali. Customise a travel itenary for Bali and enquire the costs involved"
Through the first task I wanted my participants to do was the happy flow that begins from the primary CTA. I wanted to understand how would a typical user flow look like. I wanted to understand about the difficulties they face while they are trying to plan or book a travel package. Assuming the users could come to the website either with or without a specific destination in mind, I wanted to understand how the current design influences their ability to successfully navigate through the list of available packages to find the one they would pick. The following insights were synthesized.
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3 out of 5 participants did not experience any visible difficulty on completing the first task. They were also thinking out loud while they were doing so.
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However, the other two were bothered by the sign-up/login which acted as a hindrance while trying to look at the costs. They clearly wanted to see the costs without signing up to their platform and it is very reasonable for them expect so.
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As quoted by one of the participants, “Why would I sign up if i am just here to compare costs with another website. This is really
frustrating”
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The takeaway from here would be to alter the existing user flow by letting them know about costs without the mandatory sign-up, thereby providing a seamless experience.
EXISTING USER FLOW
SUGGESTED USER FLOW
TASK-2 (COMPLETION RATE - 60%)
“This time, imagine you are planning to go to Greece. Enquire the visa checklist for going to Greece and download the visa application form”
Through the second task, I wanted to complicate things a little bit. I wanted to explore the website’s unusual functionalities which gets rarely used. Since it is a travel planning website that focuses more on international travels, I wanted to understand how well they are able to communicate the formalities/legal obligations and make it interesting without the users feeling overwhelmed. As expected, the bigger
problems started to reveal itself here.
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The moment I said you are going to Greece, the primary instinct of the users was to search Greece on the search bar just like they did fo Bali. Then, they continued to customise the packages similarly to the first task unaware of their biggest disappointment that was just about to arrive. The moment, they found out the costs, they din’t know what to do next. They were clueless on not knowing where to find the required documents checklist.
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The answer, however, was just a button away. On the menubar, there was a separate “visa” option but unfortunately, the users couldn’t notice because it was hidden under the “more” option. The users started fidgeting up and down and across different webpages. One of them tried to use their computer browser’s default search feature to find “visa” and found it.
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He added, “It would have been better if they had a search bar”. But there was a search bar. The only difference though is that search bar was used only to input the preferred destination.
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The takeaway from here would be to add a universal search option on the menu bar and add "visa" option outside the "more" button
EXISTING MENU BAR
SUGGESTED MENU BAR
TASK-3 (COMPLETION RATE - 80%)
“I would like you to subscribe to their newsletter”
Now it’s time to ease things out. What if the user actually likes the product and wants to stay informed about the deals, packages, etc? What if he/she wants to stay connected with the website? I wanted to understand if the website is able to respond well for these questions.
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The trouble came in the form of two floating bars. These bars hindered the visibility of the users diverting from what they are originally intended to do. The users had trouble finding the newsletter first of all which was hidden in a small corner in the footer.
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Even after finding it, few were not able to type because of the presence of a floating CTA. It was a terrible experience as I can see users feeling stupid for something they had no idea about. The newsletter couldn't communicate as it was intended to.
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“This thing is not letting my type my mail ID” said one of the users when talking about the floating CTA
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The takeaway from here would be to change the floating tab bar on the top and the CTA on the bottom into fixed ones respectively, which will allow the users to scroll seamlessly using the middle section, but also do any actions when necessary
EXISTING FLOATING TAB BAR
SUGGESTED FIXED TAB BAR & SCROLL-TO-TOP BUTTON
EXISTING FLOATING CTA
SUGGESTED FIXED CTA
RESEARCH DATA SUMMARY
