Search Optimised Startpage

The startpage is the most important entry-way to make a flight booking –but the website lacked clear strategy and purpose, and had a lot of technical and editorial issues.

Through analysis of data and user input is was clear that everyone interacts with the search, but only a few with the content below. Banner blindness was one of the bigger issues.

The goal was to create a more engaging and personalised startpage with clearer focus on finding your next travel, improve overall site speed and value.

The new startpage resulted in higher conversion, increased speed and usability. The design put spotlight on the flight search and booking by cleaning up content and making the hierarchy clearer.

The base for the design was doing a combination of both quantitative and qualitative research; surveys, usability tests, stakeholder interviews, card sorting with users, First-click tests, A/B testing, and data analysis of behaviours, conversion and clicks.

The redesign was made possible by close cooperation with business analysts, stakeholders, and developers. Visual designer for this project was Ali Rodsari.

My role was as an Interaction designer and researcher; fascilitating the design process and creating wireframes, flows and prototypes.

1. Analysis of data showing a low click rate on the startpage content

2. Gathering customer insights through interviews and usability testing of existing startpage and search experience

3. Mapping user and business needs

4. Competitive analysis

5. Design and prio workshop based on input from users and business

6. Design and prototype a first concept

7. Usability testing

8. Iterations of design led to different options to go forward with. A "First-click" test was used evaluate the speed and ease of use between the options.

9. Close collaboration with stakeholders, business analysts and developers made a faster and more usable startpage possible

10. A/B testing of a first release showed high increase of conversion as a result of the redesigned page and tech

Benchmark of other airlines and booking sites showed a less cluttered start page and larger focus on the search input for the user.

• Mobile first

• Accessibility is of highest priority

• Support different languages and markets

Given the business needs, user insights and our North Star, SAS also created experience and design principles. As a way to combine everything, I created feature cards with a short description and boxes to rank on a scale of 1 to 5 how much the feature would help solving our and the users need. This was a way to discuss our prio moving forward and setting a roadmap.

This created a focus for the team and a MVP to work towards.

Overall concept was to clean-up the information structure and make the hiearchy and order clearer for the user. The spotlight should be on making a search for a flight.

The small search input was given a much larger focus and room was given for a large hero image to inspire with different destinations. [PURPLE]

Personalised content such as your upcoming flights and your EuroBonus membership was given their own sections. [BLUE]

Instead of making the flight details the same size as all the other banners on the site, a full widht area was created with destinations and their deals higher up the hiearchy.[ORANGE]

SAS has a lot of news about their sustainability work, launch of new meals and their new fleet. Those were grouped together in flexible banners for the editors to curate. [GREEN]

Flows and wireframes where created to map out all scenarios. By using Miro as a digital whiteboard, the team could give feedback on the wireframes and work togehter.

A visual designer created the final look and feel for the startpage.

We ended up with three different options for the flight search module. As a way to gather insight before development could start, on how the options performed and also how the hiearchy and findability worked for the user a First Click Test was run.

Three different tests where created with the same tasks in the tool Optimal Workshop. The test was quick and time effective, and gave insight into how fast and correct a task was performed. From the insights the design was iterated, but a few questions was still left and saved for the A/B testings later on.

To test if the visual design of our new startpage still feel like the SAS brand and communicated the new strategy and look-and-feel, we created a First Impression surevey where the survey was presented with the design and then got to grade how feel certain words matched their first impression.

The design was iterated on and a second survey was sent out – which showed a significant preferral of the new design.

Both a prototype built in InVision and a fully functioning test site where tested with users in different stages of the project. The InVision prototype gave quick insight along the design process, whereas the test site gave deeper understanding of the kinks that needed fixing before launch of the MVP.

After testing and interating the design and experience, we ran an A/B test on one of the markets to compare the new startpage against the current. The results showed a much higher speed and conversion rate, which made the team confident in going out on all markets.

• Close collaboration with developers, stakeholders and users are keys to success

• Combining quantitative and qualitative research methods gave a good platform to continue working and interating the concept

• Going step-by-step to make sure you're building and releasing the right thing