Case Study:
Flight Booking
on myCWT Mobile
Background
myCWT Mobile is the world-leading business travel app, which includes multiple services for business travelers, such as trip booking and management. This case study showcases the process we went through to improve the app's flight booking capabilities, from collecting initial feedback, Identifying top issues, and solutionizing.
1. The starting point
When I joined CWT, their mobile app was already up and running . "myCWT" included multiple services and capabilities for business travelers, including booking flights.
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CWT's travelers had some choices for booking their flights - online on a dedicated website or with our travel agents, It was a strategic goal for us to shift these users into our app, but despite an extended release period, the app's flight capability wasn't adopted by our users.
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Initial design
Flight results screen
Flight filters
Search screen
Initial Stats
booking
penetration
0.7%
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conversion
rate
12%
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Monthly transactions
185
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average
booking time
4.4m
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NPS
(satisfaction)
-20
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2. Research
As the UX lead for the project, I wanted to investigate the cause of the low adoption and satisfaction. Assuming a connection between the metrics, I explored traveler behavior when booking flights and compared it to user feedback to identify the gaps between user expectations and experience.
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Usability study
We start by collecting user feedback to ensure the existing solution meets user needs. In this case, we chose a usability study to identify usability obstacles that could harm conversion and any gaps in the experience.
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The method
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In-person interviews with business travelers at their office locations
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We directed each participant to book a flight for their upcoming trip using our app
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The participants described their thoughts and considerations as they carried out the tasks
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We recorded both the session and the phone’s screen on video.
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15 participants in London, Minneapolis, St. Louis and Chicago
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"I need to be there by a certain time, and that's the most important thing for me"
“That's confusing, I'm not accustomed to seeing flights presented like that”
“I don’t like these bundles, I’m getting frustrated, and I don’t want to do it anymore"
Survey
Once I had some qualitative insights into users' main friction points in the app, We wanted to quantify them with a survey, which I used to understand the business traveler decision process, concerns, and needs.
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The method
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Online survey created on SurveyMonkey
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We set screener questions in the study to ensure participants met the target profiles
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Participants were asked about their process and criteria when booking a flight for business
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500 participants from US, UK and Canada
Main insights
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The flight search process didn’t match users’ needs for a time-based search
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Flight grouping didn’t fit users’ needs for comparison
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Flight bundles limited user choices
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Flight properties affect on decision
Flight time criteria
3. Defining the goals
Taking everything that we learned, we Identified required changes to improve the flight booking flow:
Ungroup Flights
present all flights on a list, to allow time-based selection
Un-bundle Flights
Allow selection of outbound and return flights separately
​Add time filters
provide users with time exploration based on needs
Main KPI's
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30% conversion rate
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Reduce booking time to 2m
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Improve user satisfaction (+10 NPS)
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5K monthly bookings
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3% booking penetration
MVE
We ran a short workshop with Product and Dev, during which we defined the product's MVE (Minimum Viable Experience) as a team. This was a way to define an MVP with the user experience in mind, meeting our users' basic expectations with a minimum level of experience.
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Determining the minimum experience level we'd like to maintain/achieve in the first phases.
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Shifting focus from features to experience.
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MVE standards evolve based on user's expectations (as opposed to MVP's static definition)
4. Design iteration
We started working on multiple low-fidelity concepts and prototyped them. Our goal was to run a high-level assessment of our design ideas before development. We tested our concepts with potential users of this app who matched our business traveler personas.
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After each test, we adjusted the design according to the feedback and tested it again. This iterative process allowed us to rapidly and effectively test our assumptions and improve. By the end of the design iteration process, we had a design concept that matched the users' needs.
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Methods and Tools
Un-moderated, online tests with business travelers
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Platform: Usertesting.com
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We set screener questions in the survey to ensure we met the target profiles
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>100 tests were conducted on 12 different concepts
Questions for time filters
Before vs. after search?
Double vs. single scale
5. Wireframing & Definitions
Final
Design!
6. User feedback loop
As we launched the updated version of myCWT flight booking, we wanted to be able to constantly listen to our users and look for ways to improve for them. To that end, we continuously collected feedback and acted upon it to improve the product and the user experience.
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We used in-product surveys to collect contextual feedback from specific users by asking the right questions at the right time via targeted dialogs with flight users.​
7. Impact
The myCWT flight booking redesign positively and immediately impacted all the targeted KPIs. It was released to a small batch of users, and once we were sure it was the right way to go, we released it to all of our users. We kept collecting usage data and user feedback and improved the product as it evolved to become the world-leading business travel app.
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Usage data:
Conversion
rate
28.5%
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average
booking time
2.2m
NPS
(satisfaction)
+9
Monthly transactions