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Travelers Now Book Trips Seamlessly on Virgin Voyages
01 Brief
Virgin Voyages, a global cruise company, faced low booking conversion rates on their mobile web platform. To address this, the business aimed to deeply understand the problem and enhance the booking journey. As the Lead UX Designer on a cross-functional team at Monstarlab, my role was to identify user pain points, design core flows for A/B testing, collaborate across teams, and conduct usability tests to optimize the booking experience.
YEAR
2024
DURATION
5 Months
ROLE
Lead UX Designer
PRODUCT
Mobile Web
SKILLS
User Interviews, User Flows, Journey Maps, Prototyping, Testing
Snapshot from the product: Users easily view and edit their trip
02 Business Problem
Low mobile booking conversion was a key problem for the business as it directly impacted revenue. In a post-pandemic world, travel demand was resurging, and Virgin had a growing user base with high traffic coming from mobile, driven by paid media campaigns. However, many users were dropping off. Additionally, a significant conversion rate discrepancy between desktop and mobile signaled that users faced challenges while booking.
03 People Problem
I collaborated with my team and conducted lightweight interviews to understand our users. Seniors, our primary group, needed clear, simplified flows, while young adults, a growing segment, sought fast, tech-forward, mobile-first experiences. Simplicity and intuitive interactions were my top priorities for both.
While understanding the problem, my analysis of the user flow for booking a cruise showed some early usability issues. What I found was that the flow was lengthy then competitors. It lacked intuitive paths and mobile friendly interactions, that was making navigation challenging. To understand the problem deeply, I also collaborated with our data team to analyze key drop-off points and areas of friction in the booking funnel.
05 Aligning on the Problem
We found that users were dropping off because of the cluttered interface and too many decision-making points in a single step in the journey, which was making it hard for them to complete what they came to do. Our design opportunity was to simplify the booking journey to help users complete their bookings intuitively and confidently.
06 Key Design Decisions
One of the high-impact area was improving the editing experience for users before checkout. The legacy system required a full data refresh for any edits, users were losing their progress—a highly frustrating experience.
In Option 1, I proposed a modal to inform users that editing would reset progress. In Option 2, I designed a stateful editing feature to allow seamless changes without restarting the booking flow. I advocated for Option 2 by citing frequent user interactions with the edit button, usability tests favoring stateful editing, reduced abandoned carts, and scalability for future updates. I gained alignment and my team agreed to implement stateful editing.
Higher User Control
Higher User Control
Higher User Control
Users often had to restart the booking process for minor changes, leading to increased cart abandonment. Introducing a modal with an edit option kept a significant number of users in the booking flow.
Users often had to restart the booking process for minor changes, leading to increased cart abandonment. Introducing a modal with an edit option kept a significant number of users in the booking flow.
Users often had to restart the booking process for minor changes, leading to increased cart abandonment. Introducing a modal with an edit option kept a significant number of users in the booking flow.
Another problem I tackled was the cruise card component. These cards appeared after users entered their search inputs of dates and destinations, to help them browse and learn about cruises. Data revealed that a significant number of users who interacted with the cruise cards dropped off before moving to the next step. As a key decision point early in the funnel, solving challenges here was critical.
I explored options to simplify the card layout, benchmarking to align with users' mental models, our design system for consistency, and web constraints. Together with my PM, engineers, and lead, we evaluated the tradeoffs of each exploration and agreed that Option 3 struck the best balance between usability, feasibility, and business goals. I also preferred it because it had significant user impact and its modular approach could scale.
Simplified Exploration
Simplified Exploration
Simplified Exploration
I introduced a streamlined cruise card design, placed key info upfront to help users quickly identify critical details. This approach led to a key increase in users completing their bookings.
I introduced a streamlined cruise card design, placed key info upfront to help users quickly identify critical details. This approach led to a key increase in users completing their bookings.
I introduced a streamlined cruise card design, placed key info upfront to help users quickly identify critical details. This approach led to a key increase in users completing their bookings.
Another high impact area we tackled was with user's checkout experience. Users got overwhelmed with excessive scrolling to see the payment details, causing significant drop-offs. I came up with various options, tested those quickly with users, incorporated my team's feedback and iterated on the designs.
Price Breakdown
Price Breakdown
Price Breakdown
I simplified the price breakdown with a mobile-friendly interaction pattern, focused on displaying key price details. This led to a 7% reduction in drop-offs on the summary page and a 12% faster booking completion time on average.
I simplified the price breakdown with a mobile-friendly interaction pattern, focused on displaying key price details. This led to a 7% reduction in drop-offs on the summary page and a 12% faster booking completion time on average.
I simplified the price breakdown with a mobile-friendly interaction pattern, focused on displaying key price details. This led to a 7% reduction in drop-offs on the summary page and a 12% faster booking completion time on average.
Besides generating core UX flows, I proposed new features to address user pain points.
After delivering the key solutions, as a growth opportunity, I took the initiative to work on a flow on how exploring a cruise might look like, since our users expressed difficulty in finding cruises tailored to their interests. I explored a feature that could appeal to our growing base of young users while also keeping adults engaged.
