A booking flow you can get through without thinking
Through Hive, I worked as the embedded design partner for iCentric, a Leicester software house. One of the bigger jobs was the booking flow for Travelodge.
- Role
- Embedded designer for iCentric, through Hive
- Worked with
- iCentric's product and development team
- Where
- Studio
- What I did
- UX/UIBooking flowWeb design
The problem
Booking a budget hotel should take a couple of minutes. In practice people were getting stuck. The search hid useful detail behind clicks, the hotel page made people hunt for what they needed, and changing a booking was harder than making one.
- 1
Search
Compare hotels at a glance, without opening each one.
- 2
Hotel
Answer the questions people arrive with, in the order they ask them.
- 3
Manage booking
Change a booking yourself, quickly, without calling anyone.
Search: compare without clicking through
The old results made you open each hotel to find out whether it suited you. The rework uses the space better, with the map and the list side by side, and pulls the critical detail into the result itself so you can compare without leaving the page. That's the screen at the top of this page.
Hotel: answer the question earlier
On the hotel page the information was regrouped around how people actually decide. The tabs were reworked, and the things people kept scrolling and hunting for were moved further up the page.
Room selection and price come first. The supporting detail sits underneath, grouped so it's easy to scan.
Manage booking: the shortest route
Changing a booking is often more stressful than making one. Manage booking became a simpler, faster route: see your booking summary, then change what you need in a couple of steps.
The booking summary up front, with the changes people make most often right next to it.
Fantastic service, can't recommend highly enough.
Marc Newstead, Managing Director at iCentric, on our years working together
What I took from it
Good booking UX is mostly subtraction. Every click you take out is a customer who doesn't give up halfway.
