DESIGN & CODE

Semi-Opaque hotel

How to improve the conversion of Hotwire modele business in Europe

Problem identified:
In 2015 Hotwire, a division of the Expedia group, landed in Europe opening in several countries. The conversion of the website was low in relation to the number of visits received. The model of paying 50% of the price without knowing which hotel it would be was not well understood by the European consumer.

Diagnosis:The European customer personality needed more than a big discount to consume Hotwire's business model.

Design Thinking

Requirement: Create a better UX experience to improve conversion of Hotwire website and mobile App.

The process:

Empathy
My role: User research

Conduct several interviews in our London office based in the Angel Stattion area and coffee shops in the Westminster, Victoria and Soho areas, explaining the bussinnes model and listening to feedback from potential clients.
Problem definition
My role : Facilitator
With the data extracted from the user research I designed and animated a workshop with the Bussines owners to identify and define the problem, the Result: The European user need something more than a great discount to close the deal.
- Where are the Hotel photos?
- What is the Hotel name?
- Where are the Hotel adress?
Ideation
My role : Design

Based on the Hotwire model, the customer does not know which hotel he is paying for, he is only guaranteed a 50% discount of the total price. To make this model attractive to the customer, we designed an experience in which we showed pictures of the type of room that would be booked, without showing details that could identify which hotels were participating in the bet.
Prototype
My role : Code

We build a prototype based on HTML and Javascript to create the experience and show a gallery of photos of rooms that could be like the one you are going to book. With this the user would at least have the idea of what level of “Comfort” is assured and could take the step to try to close the deal.
Test
My role : Conduct user testing

With the prototype built we tested in London, Paris and Berlin the new model with potential users on desktop and mobile device and found that the experience was much better received and users were more enthusiastic to try the product.
Published
My role : Monitoring

Once the digital experience was published, my mission was to collect data through google analytics to see and analyse user behaviours in order to improve the tool in future iterations.

Lessons learnt:
I learned that even if the discount can be very interesting, European customers need more security when purchasing a service, they are not driven only by price.

The American user is willing to bet all or nothing.
The European user accepts to pay more to guarantee comfort.

Visit the website

Solving real needs