Costa Rica My Way
A Website Design for a Travel Service
Overview
Costa Rica My Way is a female-owned travel agency that offers services and packages to their clients. Their mission is to distinguish themselves as a localized travel planner.
The main goals of Costa Rica My Way include :
supporting local small companies
providing preset activity plans choose from
offering customizable plans based on interests and needs
Who was involved?
There were two designers involved in this project, including myself. We discussed progress and provided deliverables to the staff on a weekly basis. Working closely as a remote team, we completed the project in 5 weeks. No budget was required.
Our responsibilities included :
Performing user research and market analysis to gain more information
Creating a low-fidelity prototype to test with potential clients
Presenting our final design solutions and deliverables to the CRMW staff
What’s the Problem?
We examined how people were planning their vacations and discovered there is a stigma attached to travel agencies- most people think of them as inflexible and too expensive. How could we overcome this issue and encourage clients to book vacations?
Research
To start off, we analyzed the current market to see how our competition was tackling this problem. Our goal was to identify areas of improvement and determine points of interception along the user journey.
Competitive Analysis
KimKim - online travel agency for multi-day itineraries
We found that KimKim’s onboarding is too long. Account creation mandate leads to abandonment from the user. Also, the landing page is cluttered and overwhelms the user with articles and promotional material.
GoJourny - online trip planning only
GoJourny charges the user during the last step before any itinerary is provided, leading to user abandonment. Chat assistance was also text-heavy and irritating to click out of.
Surveys and Interviews
We sent out a post-covid travel survey to potential clients to gain more insight. Participants were selected to be interviewed about their travel habits and concerns. During this process, we learned how the user thinks and what they are looking for when booking.
Key Findings
∙ ⅔ of particpants travel 1-3 times a year
∙ 92% never booked with a travel agency
∙ 50% like to plan their own vacations
User Persona
“I always use a travel agency except for when I’m going back to my home country. I like them because I don’t have to worry about planning anything- they do all the work for you. They already have knowledge of the area and what there is to explore.”
“Safety is very important to me. I’m worried about getting hustled or swindled when I travel to other countries. It’s hard for me to trust travel agencies that aren’t transparent. Maybe if more information was displayed on where not to go or what to look out for I’d be more willing to book using them.”
Ideation
We wanted to emphasize flexibility in terms of pace and preferences. Other traditional friction points with online booking were addressed by providing short onboarding, a clean interface, and high availability of options.
Color Palette
Our style guide established a welcoming tone and a warm color palette. The goal was to visually enhance the booking process and make the user feel at ease.
MVP
We created a minimum viable product (MVP) of our solution ideas to decide which features to include.
Design
We designed an onboarding questionnaire for users to complete prior to booking their vacations. Using the information that is submitted, a travel agent reaches out shortly afterwards to provide itineraries catered to the user’s goals.
Trip Logistics
Trip Preferences
New Features
Flights not Included
We inform the user early on that CRMW does not offer flights with packages, so they are not surprised later in the process. Then, we ask if they would like to continue booking.
Trip Logistics & Preferences
The logistics section consists of questions about the desired dates for the trip, who the user is traveling with, and the budget. The preferences section consists of questions about what their travel style is, what activities they enjoy, and meal preferences.
Follow-Up
The user enters their email at the end of the questionnaire, and a member of the staff contacts them within 24 hours to follow-up.
Testing
Participants navigated through a prototype we built as if they were booking a vacation to Costa Rica. This allowed us to see if it was intuitive to use and where it needed improvement.
“Does this include the cost of everything? Like breakfast, lunch, and dinner all together? Or just one? It doesn’t say whether this is for each day or each meal.”
“I think after this they will carefully look and see what I like and make sure that the itinerary includes that. Hopefully they will map everything out back to back in a way where I can see everything I want to see. They’ll contact me by email and give me the best price that they can.”
*Additional changes were made after this recording
We fixed issues that we did not see before and altered some potentially confusing terminology. The CRMW staff also had some suggestions on what to include, and we implemented their considerations before delivering the final product.
Next Steps
CRMW’s Future Plans :
Find traditional sources of referrals to gain a larger customer base, establish credibility, and get reviews
Invest in marketing research to determine how to leverage key search terms and configure search engine optimization
Look into partnerships with local hotels, airports, and flight booking sites to funnel customers to their hospitality network
