As part of the VCCP digital UX team, re-designing the online cruise booking flow for Saga holidays.
Saga wanted a complete refresh of their digital experiences, from insurance to cruises. Although they had a large pool of loyal customers they felt their current online offering looked and felt dated, thereby impacting their ability to win over new customers.
I was brought in to oversee the transformation of their cruise booking journey, which had become bloated over years of incremental additions. One of the most important aspects of this project was to be mindful of how varied Saga customers are in their technical abilities and accessibility needs.
As you can see from the video it was a real transformation for Saga that encompassed a number of moving parts. Make sure you catch my cameo at around the 0:36 second mark during one of the usability testing sessions I ran.
It was important to first lean into the Saga leadership teams' experience and knowledge of their customers. I led a number of working sessions aimed at understanding the nuances of the current booking journey and to uncover any longstanding issues that needed to be addressed. These sessions were extremely useful in helping to understand some of the technical limitations inherent within the current journey, many of which stemmed from costly external API calls when users wanted to view flight options, which needed to be kept to a minimum.
Reviewing the analytics also led to some useful insights. Prospective customers would return to their customised holiday multiple times before making a purchase. It was inferred that due to the high value of the holidays booked this act of returning to a package was natural prudent behaviour. I took this insight forward when designing the new journey, ensuring the customer always had the opportunity to return to a summary state of their holiday to ensure it was correct.
"It was important to first lean into the Saga leadership teams' experience and knowledge of their customers."
Taking into account current user behaviour and the work being done across the rest of the Saga site we knew we wanted to simplify the booking process considerably. Where possible we also wanted to reuse design patterns to increase familiarity and create a cohesive experience from start to finish. Ultimately we needed to create a wholly accessible and intuitive booking journey that adhered to both business and user needs whilst maintaining flexibility in design to allow for future enhancements.
I created simple user flows to discuss with stakeholders to ensure our technical understanding was aligned. This also allowed us to simply convey the current flows' complexity without design work getting in the way.
Initial ideation was focussed around the interplay between a user choosing holiday options and being able to view their package holistically. When combined these two elements often felt overwhelming and claustrophobic. I also toyed with the idea of having quite a linear flow, moving from one step to another until you reach the checkout. Although this did reduce the quantity of steps to conversion it made the act of moving backwards and changing a holiday option seem like a chore. From the conversations I had with the Saga stakeholders I know customers liked to come back and tinker with their package, seeing which options best suited them. The route I went on to develop allowed for a customer to return to previous choices easily and re-select them, all whilst slowing seeing their full holiday package build up piece by piece. Each booking flow step had its' own space and was never cramped.
Usability testing spanned the full booking journey and was extremely well received. Many users commented how easy the new booking flow was, and often they would be able to move through the process completely unprompted. One user exclaimed "it's a doddle," which gave Saga the confidence that the approach was correct.
I worked closely with UI to ensure the clear space shown in the wireframes was brought into the higher fidelity designs. The brand work undertaken across the rest of the Saga site was also applied, creating an extremely modern and polished booking flow.
Quotes from usability testing:
"It's a doddle"
"Much easier to use than the existing site"
"More modern looking... visually this is way more pleasing on the eye"
"More clear, easy to use and up to date"
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