Collette

A global tour operator looking to modernize their website and customer satisfaction in order to increase conversions.

Task
Competitive Research
Wireframes
Prototyping
User Testing

Timeline
10 months

 

Overview

Collette, a family-owned tour operator, has extensive experience leading tours across all seven continents, offering a wide selection of 160 tours. To stay competitive amidst the growing number of tour operators, they realized the importance of updating their website and refining their online presence to better serve their audience.

Problem

While customers highly enjoyed the tours provided by Collette, they frequently encountered challenges with the website, leading to an increase in customer service calls for bookings instead of online completions. The primary focus was to revamp the website to enhance the online booking experience, aiming to boost customer confidence in booking online and consequently reduce the volume of calls to the customer service department.

 Discovery & Research

To understand the users and their needs I used a variety of methods like user interviews, contextual interviews with customer service, and completed a competitive analysis. I selected 14 direct, 10 indirect competitors, and 10 e-commerce entities were analyzed to benchmark against our competitive set. It was evident through user testing and this analysis that showed other websites had clear brand identity, navigation, ease of booking, and consistent design components.

  • Contextual Interviews with customer service revealed 20% percentage of users called to book their tours due to confusion on the website

  • During user testing with an initial group of 15 participants, we conducted a balanced comparison against competitors. The results revealed that 80% of participants perceived our brand as 'business-like and cold.'

  • Furthermore, users expressed a pervasive sense of distrust towards the organization, attributing it to the homepage's perceived disorganization. They encountered difficulties in locating tours and struggled to discern the variety of tours offered by the company.

Design

After conducting an in-depth competitive analysis, user testing and contextual interviews with customer service, we marked several critical pain points within our current design. Users expressed frustration with the inconsistency of our brand identity, describing it as cold and detached. Additionally, they struggled to navigate our platform, feeling uncertain about where to find tours and lacking clarity on our brand's values and identity.

  • Clarify our brand identity and carry it throughout the website and on tour experience

  • Create clear sections on the homepage to demonstrate what the company provides and why its unique from other tour operators in the competitive set

  • 30 low fidelity wireframes were created for three key pages the homepage, product page, and search result page for initial redesign launch that were eventually created in high fidelity and prototyped

Establish a Design System

  • Create a consistent design system that is used on the website and in print material

  • Collaborated with developers and graphic designers to create a scalable typography system using rem units, also providing px equivalents for print and wireframe design.

  • Created a design library in Adobe XD that housed our components used in the redesign

  • Audit the current icon system and remove any inconsistent or redundant assets from the website

 Addressing Homepage Confusion

Redesigning the homepage was the first page we focused on and after completing a balanced comparison test we saw that customers were getting caught trying to locate tours, understanding the company as a whole and connecting with the brand. Addressing these challenges was pivotal in our redesign efforts to establish clarity, instill confidence, and streamline the user journey for improved navigation and comprehension.

  • Removed the carousel that caused 90% of users frustration as they reported not being able to control the sliding images and could not read the information

  • Adding dedicated sections to the homepage with clear titles about the companies value and benefits improved brand perception and trust overall

  • Eliminating the 3 solid color primary buttons to one consistent button improved users confidence on where to navigate to on the site

  • Enhanced tour navigation by integrating the destination section with tours, utilizing secondary buttons to provide users with more information about specific destinations. This streamlined approach addressed user frustration observed when attempting to access tour listings directly.

  • Introduced tour cards under the 'Our Tours' section in the navigation to guide users to view and explore tours, including popular and discounted options previously displayed in a carousel format.

 Outcome

We continued to work on other pages after the redesign launch to increase consistency on the website with the improved brand identity and design system. Additional user testing was completed with another 35 tests done using moderated and unmoderated methods which showed that the new website outperformed the old by increasing bookings by 30%. Product pages were testing well compared to the old version where users had difficulties understanding what they could expect on any given tour. Efforts to add more testing methods like card sorting were added to address navigation confusion with the sections not addressed in the first release like the tour styles and destination pages.