✦ Transforming Boat Rentals
A boat rental marketplace that aims to make boat rental and yacht charter easy for both experienced sailors and those looking for an exotic getaway. Offering 50,000+ boats across 800 destinations.
Understanding the Background
I started this project by an intro meeting with the Head of Product, where we spoke about the previous workflow and current pain points. I took time to get more familiar with the boat booking process. We agreed that our goals were a UI revamp for a more modern feel, improving individual UX flows, creating a consistent design system for future use and enhancing development collaboration.
Problem Analysis
Inconsistent user interface (UI): Due to multiple designers having worked on the design partially over time, there was an overall lack in UI consistency and design file organization. This created confusion for developers and stakeholders when managing final designs.
Unclear user experience (UX): Flows within the website and booking experience weren't intuitive and risked a higher chance of boat bookings to be rejected by the charter.
Poor copy: Insufficient copy often led to lack of context, e.g. if a boat couldn't be booked, users wouldn't understand why and would have to reach out to charters in order to find out.
Not accustomed to both user types: The initial platform design mainly catered to inexperienced tourists, while neglecting experienced sailors, who knew exactly what offers they want.
Improving the Booking Experience
Individual boat cards: The initial cards were filled with data that wasn't properly grouped together and the cards consisted of multiple urgency labels. I focused on creating more compact cards, that show the most relevant information while being consistent in UI.
Price widget: We worked on improving the booking flow for standard and non-standard bookings. Standard booking adheres to the industry standard of Saturday-Saturday date selection, which led users to the best offers and highest booking success. Non-standard bookings are those made outside this timeline, which had a lower success rate. We used clearer copy and better placement to re-direct users who were unfamiliar with these standards to the best offers.
Calendar widget: Initially, users could only see boat offers after selecting the dates on the calendar. This was improved with two additions - Flexible search & "See best offers" CTA. By clicking on "See best offers" on the Boat Details page, users get quick access to the best deals with available dates and highest acceptance chance. Flexible search grants this neat feature from the Homepage too.
Better Deals
In case of non-standard bookings, Zizoo shows users alternative deals for better prices. This is either the same boat on different dates, or a different boat with a higher acceptance rate for the initially selected dates. This way, users are helped to avoid high prices and maximize the booking acceptance rate.
Bringing Higher Conversion Rates
Over time, the team recognized a need for a dedicated landing page for promoting selected destinations. The landing pages would help inexperienced tourists looking for specific requirements such as family friendly destinations or weekly rentals. I began working on this design from scratch in consultation with the Head of Product and SEO expert.
After the research and wireframe stage, the landing page included detailed filtering, a variety of offers depending on user needs and information about what specialties each location had to offer as their USP. After launching the landing pages, the team saw an increase in traffic and more bookings.
Flexible Search
The need for more flexibility in bookings led us to improve the calendar widget, by adding Flexible search as an option. With the help of this feature, users are given the option to find a larger variety of deals within specific timeframes or seasons.
Reflecting on the Outcomes
UI consistency: This initial lack showed us how important it is to keep track of this segment from the project start. Creating a consistent components system allowed us to easily implement them into new designs and to step-by-step revamp the entire platform UI to a more clean and modern design.
Unique industry requirements: I learned about unique maritime industry standards such as the optimal booking timeline being Saturday-Saturday, due to boat maintenance. This played a big role in creating the booking flow, since less experienced users aren’t familiar with these regulations. We had to clearly communicate this, so users could easily get best offers and wouldn’t get rejected by the charter.
Overall collaboration: This collaboration has enriched me for an experience of working together with a team of versatile roles. I improved my stakeholder collaboration skills and independently presented and discussed design proposals. I handled task planning and organization together with Head of Product, which allowed us to keep improvements and design improvements on track.
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