Domestic Flight Search Experience

The challenge

In an effort to achieve some significant organisation goals in the digital commerce space, Flight Centre required an online booking engine that met the demands of the modern day traveller. Fast, efficient, and delightful - we needed to provide our customers with the digital utilities that allow them to make an informed travel decision.

Core objectives:

My role:

As Lead UX Strategist, it was my primary role to understand the strategic pillars that drive our business, identify commercial opportunities, as well as empathise with our customers in order to obtain key insights on how we can make improvements to the experience.

Armed with a wealth of research, I was responsible for preparing, validating, and acquiring sign-off on the low fidelity user flow and concept vision. Once approved, I worked closely with a Visual Designer and development team to deliver and validate the final solution.


Research & Analysis:

Stakeholder interviews:

Given that Flight Centre has an existing product live in the market, there was a goldmine of information to absorb from multiple facets of the business. Here’s a few key stakeholders I engaged early on...

Digital Commerce Leaders:

I wanted to deep-dive into our high level strategic business goals, what our commercial levers were, and how I could best balance user & business requirements to deliver solutions that made incremental improvement across the board.

Digital Marketing:

I wanted to understand their current state, their roadmap, and if there was any opportunities moving forward. What kind of traffic would they be sending to the booking engine? Was the traffic primarily sale related? Could we handle sales better? What are the opportunities that we're missing, and how could I help achieve them?

Customer Support:

I wanted to get a grasp of the most common customer pain-points, as well as understanding the effect they have on the customer support team. Is there low hanging fruit that we can take action on immediately?

Funnel Analysis

In an effort to determine key areas of focus, it was important to understand the ins & outs of the current purchase funnel. How is it currently performing? Are there particular steps that are underperforming that I should focus on?

Key findings:
  • Upwards of 92% of customers are abandoning at the flights results step
  • Other steps are performing on par with industry benchmarks
Heatmap Analysis:

Whilst user testing will always have its place, in my opinion, nothing beats the quantative read on user behaviour that heatmapping gives you. I was able to set this up in seconds, and within 24 hours I had collected enough data to form several hypotheses.

Key findings:
  • 20% of total page clicks are attributed to a user filtering/sorting results
  • 24% of total clicks are attributed to a user changing the search parameters in some way
  • Users are seeking more information about specific fare inclusions
  • Users tend to click on the route information instead of the "Edit search" button
  • The "Save Search" feature has not been adopted by our users, with less than 1% total page clicks
Customer Surveys:

To get a quantitative read on numerous questions and assumptions we had, I surveyed our users via a range of in-page Usabilla surveys.

Key findings:
  • 80% of users who visit the results page are in the research/comparison phase, with 20% ready to book
  • 90% of users are leisure travellers, with 10% travelling for business.
  • 72% of users prefer the "Cheapest price" sorting mechanic
  • 35% of users have an airline preference but remain flexible based on other factors. 7% have a preference and won't consider any other airlines.
  • 45% of users have a flight time oreference but remain flexible based on other factors. 10% have a preference and won't consider any other times. 45% don't have a preference at all.
  • 60% of users have booked in a Flight Centre store before
  • Net promoter score: 12
User Testing:

After analysing the data from the heatmap findings, I then put the product in front of users in order to understand the underlying reasons for their behaviors.

Key research findings:
  • Users grow impatient with the intial flight search loading screen. Many think it is frozen.
  • Users struggle to easily scan the lead-in price point when they're in the research phase.
  • Baggage inclusions per fare are unclear. Users question whether they're able to add additional baggage.
  • General fare inclusions are also unclear.
  • Navigation between departing/returning legs is confusing users.
  • Hit areas on mobile are an issue.
  • Users would like visual reinforcement of the search they're performing.
Competitor Analysis:

To get an idea of what our largest competitors were doing, I conducted a comprehensive competitor analsysis at the component level.

Key findings:
  • No major Online Travel Agent or Metasearch sufficiently explains fare inclusions. A huge opportunity!
  • Advanced filters and sorting mechanics are standard across most competitors. Flight Centre aren't in this space at all. Considering industry statistics suggest that users are 30% more likely to convert when filters are applied - this is another massive opportunity!

Concept Design:

After several iterations as a result of extensive user testing, we arrived at the following product:

Want to see it for yourself? Perform a Domestic search on the Flight Centre site! :)