Clipper Vacations provides multiple transportation, hotel and tour packages in the northwest. The company is well-known for it’s Victoria Clipper ferry service between downtown Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia, and Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.
The old Clipper Vacations website had a very low conversion rate. The website was not mobile-optimized. Analytics data revealed that site usage and online bookings had dropped drastically in the last year. The company wanted to redesign the web experience, keeping the following goals in mind:
Old website screenshots
I led an effort to redesign the booking experience on the website that aimed to:
Clipper Vacations limited the redesign to the upper and middle sales funnel, that leads a visitor to the booking flow. The booking flow redesign was out of scope at the time, due to budgetary concerns. It will be included in Phase 2 of the project redesign.
Data from usage statistics revealed that very few sections of the site were visited regularly. Customer service feedback showed that there was a large amount of frustration around understanding what’s included in packages. Visitors were also looking to add additional activities to available packages.
Clipper Vacations provided us with research-based customer personas. Our team uncovered user needs based on these personas and leveraged Cubeyou, an AI consumer insights platform to learn more about each persona’s preferences, affinities, and much more.
We learned from the usability study that website visitors had different intents while visiting the Clipper site. Some casually browsed for packages, while others knew exactly what they wanted and were ready to book right away. I focused on designing an experience that caters to both audience. The key strategies included:
1. Reorganizing the site architecture: The old navigation did not differentiate packages with overnight stay from day trip packages. Users were confused when they saw hotels and activities in the main navigation and could not add it to a pre-selected package in the cart. The user flow was broken and very confusing.
Old Navigation
I revised the website navigation to clearly present the package types offered by Clipper. Packages can now be searched by travel only, overnight stays, day trips. Packages by destination include both, overnight packages & day trips.
Redesigned Navigation
Users have a choice of starting a booking from the homepage or browsing day trip/overnight packages and booking the one they like. Hotels and activity are bundled with destination packages, and a user can easily change their assigned hotel or add an additional activity in the booking flow.
Flow for booking an overnight package by destination
2. Adding a booking widget: A booking widget allows a website visitor to browse packages based on their travel dates and destination choice.
Booking Widget Wireframe Iterations
The widget is designed to allow travelers to book only ferry travel or a day trip or an overnight package. The design of the widget with visible fields is in line with travel and airline websites. It encourages visitors to select a destination and find relevant packages in an instant. I could not influence a few parts of the booking flow that could benefit from a redesign, since the purchase experience (booking.clippervacations.com) was out of scope.
Added a persistent ‘Plan your trip’ CTA: A mobile-friendly version of the widget that can be accessed from the main navigation at any time, since the main navigation is pinned to the top of the browser.
Plan your trip flow
3. Rethinking the key pages:
We designed and tested the primary user flows and in the process created several iterations of the key pages: Homepage, Day Trip Package, Overnight Package, Destination, Clipper Ferry
Wireframe Iterations
After several iterations we got to the final design for the website. I worked with a visual designer to apply the appropriate visual design patterns to the Invision prototype.
I worked on detailed annotations for their engineering team along with content outlines for a few secondary pages.
The redesign has a massive impact on their business. Online revenue was up by 25% six months after the new website launch. The booking widget on the homepage was a huge draw and overall, there was a big uptick in overnight package bookings.
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