Itinerary Upsell

Navan (formerly TripActions) is a corporate travel and expense platform that allows travelers to book, view, and manage business travel and expenses. All bookings are organized on the Trips page, where travelers have the flexibility to view or make changes to their bookings when needed.

In Q1 of 2022, there was a company goal to increase booking volume. I was tasked with exploring small and creative solutions, that aimed to encourage travelers to book more from their Trips page.

Role

Sole product designer–UX/UI, product strategy, prototyping, user research, A/B testing, QA.

Team

1 Product Manager
1 User Researcher
2 Engineers
1 Content Strategist

Duration and Formats

2 weeks for desktop and mobile

What's wrong with the current experience?

In order for travelers to purchase more booking types (flight, hotel, train, rental car, or black car) from their Trips page, "Add to trip" was the sole action to do so.

Restarting the funnel

Restarting the funnel poses an inconvenience for travelers; it redirects to the Home search form without auto-filling known information, requiring manual input of details (4+ fields) each time.

Low placement

As travelers purchase more booking types, the side navigation grows and pushes the "Add to trip" action farther down. This creates awareness challenges for travelers and delays them from making their next booking.

Pre-existing Trips page

Learning from competitors

By analyzing other travel companies, I noticed common techniques used, such as dynamic upsells and deals, as ways to encourage users to make additional bookings.

In addition, I partnered with our data and research teams to learn more about a traveler's motivation and behavior. Past research studies revealed that price and Amazon or loyalty points were key motivators for travelers when booking. Internal data shed light booking behavior by analyzing the booking sequence data, showing patterns in the types of bookings travelers are likely to make next.

Hypotheses

In collaboration with a product manager, we explored various paths and aligned on concepts that were heavily influenced by our prior competitor analysis and data insights.

Discoverability

If we improve the discoverability of the sole action to add more booking types from the Trips page, then this could heighten traveler awareness and, consequently, increase the likelihood of booking.

Anticipate user needs

If we use our in-house data to suggest booking options that fit the traveler's needs, then it could speed up the booking process and make it easier for travelers to decide faster.

Freedom of choice

If we allow travelers the freedom to choose the booking type they need, then it gives them the flexibility to make any booking on their own time.

Early explorations

I explored possible solutions with a product manager and presented them to the design and engineering teams for feedback on technical feasibility, which revealed that certain ideas were either not feasible or required more time.

This led us to narrow down our focus on smaller initiatives to prepare for an upcoming redesign later that year. Once aligned, I began exploring different visuals for each one:

Hypothesis 1 - Discoverability

I re-positioned the action, "Add to booking" to the top as a way to increase discoverability while contextualizing the action with the existing bookings.

Travelers have the flexibility to select whichever booking type (flight, hotel, train, rental car, and black car) they need at any given time without any restrictions.

Hypothesis 2 - Anticipate user needs

I leveraged internal booking sequence data and research insights to dynamically showcase the next booking type that a traveler is likely to book, coupled with low prices, as a way to encourage users to start the booking process.

Hypothesis 3 - Freedom of choice

This concept aimed to be a visual tracker to show which booking types have or haven’t been booked yet.

To make it actionable, I utilized our booking sequence data as the source of the dynamic primary button–where the button copy would change based on historical user behavior.

Post-feedback iterations

Feedback from stakeholders helped to identify technical limitations and page constraints which required changes to preferred designs.

Hypothesis 1 - Discoverability

After reviewing the designs a content strategist, we decided to change the button copy from the initial "Add to trip" to gain insights into a traveler's language preference.

Hypothesis 2 - Anticipate user needs

Due to technical limitations, we couldn’t surface the price as originally designed so instead, I generalized the design to show the booking type and dates–making it adaptable for all 5 product lines (flight, hotel, train, rental car, and black car).

Hypothesis 3 - Freedom of choice

Utilizing familiar booking type icons as a visual guide to illustrate booked and unbooked items, while highlighting actionable elements in blue.

Travelers are then directed to the home search form, now enhanced with pre-filled fields, addressing a prior shortfall in the existing experience.

User testing

I partnered with a user researcher to conduct five 1-1 moderated interviews remotely with the goal to test our hypotheses on discoverability, anticipating the user’s needs, and freedom of choice.

Insights revealed clear design preferences and highlighted areas of improvement:

A/B testing with 5% of our customer base

To further test the designs, we conducted an A/B test of the two most preferred designs from the prior user test.

Results revealed the visual tracker concept performed the best, indicating a 27% increase in the number of searches from the Trips page. This aligned with our past user testing results, giving us confidence to push the new design live.

Learnings

Zoom out and look at the larger picture

The short timeline and pressure from leadership sparked ideas that leaned more on the business side. My priority is to distill the feedback to viable options that work within the constraints of our scope and present the benefits/drawbacks so that stakeholders have what they need to make informed decisions.

Emphasizing the importance of creating transparency in our work

If it wasn't for our team stand-up, this project could've collided with an ongoing experiment. By creating transparency in our work, this allowed me to pair with another designer to learn about their goals and rationale behind their decisions. Sharing insights from their project that could be leveraged during ours, knowing this constraint was valuable in the initial scoping and identifying where this experience could or could not live.