introduction
why was the service needed?
the background
For the digital leaders in their fields, an effortless buying experience of a service or a product is an essential part of a modern customer experience. Together with Aurinkomatkat we wanted to lift the customer satisfaction even to new heights, so that the trip booking would easy, fast and effortless - no matter if you are a first timer or an experienced veteran.
logo
founded in
1963
Trips to
34
different countries
competitors
where is the demand?
the customer lifecycle & strategic position
The focus area for the service design was the enhancement of the trip booking experience of Aurinkomatkat.fi. As trip booking as an experience usually involves a good amount of dreaming & planning before the actual booking takes place, there was a need for booking to support especially planning as a behaviour pattern.
the approach
what did we want to achieve?
Reseaching the DNA for a human-centric booking experience
The key objective of the service design was the to make the trip booking experience as attracting and customer friendly experience as possible. Therefore it was essential to have a customer centric approach in order to find out how Suntours customers would like to book their holidays.
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understanding the underlying customer needs behind booking
By interviewing the customers at home and at destinations we understood what the customers would actually prefer when they are booking their holidays.It became apparent customers preferred options and alternatives beside their ‘top-of-mind’ destinations.
Comprehensive analysis of customer data & analytics
Analytics and quantitative customer data analysis helped us to see the big picture behind the existing customer behaviour. Combined to qualitative reseach, it helped us to draw connections between different user initiatives.
prototyping the hypothesis and listening to customers
Most importantly we wanted to listen the customers by interviewing them. We reflected our early thinking back to them in an understandable format - with a prototype. It became apparent customers preferred an easy way to make an initial search with intuitive logics. In addition they wanted to search suitable trips with very detailed parametres, and possibility to compare different trip alternatives.
what were the holistic conclusions?
the insights
Booking is a non-linear experience starting from quantity and ending to quality
it was clear from the beginning behaviour patterns for dreaming and planning being nonlinear and varyong from customer to customer. The concept would need to serve very different needs not falling into the trap of serving only one single obvious customer journey track.
the customer needs are as unique as customers themselves
There’s a huge array of different customer needs that even the customers themselves are not necessarily aware of. Starting from very basic and general needs, a successful booking engine would start filtering out non-relevant options and allow easy comparison of different alternatives.
information is needed in every step of a purchase process
In order to serve a solid booking customer experience, we found out that it's crudicial to provide supportative information in every step along the purchase process. This would increase the conversion rate and considerably decrease the need for parallel search activities of supportative information outside the boundaries of booking flow.
tailoring & customisation are the key for engagement
With the help of customer interviews and analysis of analytics we discovered that personalisation and well-timed relevancy playd a key role in order to successfully place the additional services offering.
the service concept
how customers could compare and cherry-pick different options?
the funnel model for booking flow
The result of the concepting was a funnel model booking flow where the emphasis is on easy planning and fast booking. When seeking destinations and hotels, the concept would be adaptive fitting in multitude of personal preferences. This would include right tools for filtering, sorting, and comparison so that the planning phase would be pleasant & effective, and customers would reach their end goal easily.
the craftmanship
the ux concept
ux concept fundamentals
The UX concept was solely built around the customers and their wide and unpredictable range of preferences. All the necessary information required for making a booking was unified and gathered around the funnel-type UX flow, where the filtering and sorting of information played a key role. Booking could so be done effortlessly regardless of the vast amount of content and options to choose from. In practise UX concept would function so that finding your preferences would require just few clicks.
Multidestination search (high-level search)
The renewed destination search makes possible for the users to search trip options from multiple destinations at the same time. With a flexible time scope it also shows the trip availability information in the calendar.
the gain
Search rapidly multiple destinations at the same time and be aware of suitable dates instantly
Filtering, sorting & day-picker search (mid- to low-level search)
With the filtering and sorting users can find their personal preferences from the vast amount of options easily. Depending on the variety of personal preferences, users can search with a mid-level search criterias such as price range, rating of the hotel, and alternative trip dates to a low-level search criterias such as pool, wi-fi or a even a microwave oven.
the gain
Be quickly aware of all the suitable options that are matching your personal preferences
Unified UX flow
All the destination information relevant for making a booking was unified with search in order to create an effortless, comfortable and solid UX flow. In practise there wouldn't be scattered booking experience or UX flow exits anymore to reach isolated islands of information.
the gain
All the relevant information for making the booking are at hand
The results
In year 2017, Suntours became market leader in Finland with 27.4% market share. The total amount of customers was 214 411 which meant over 9% annual increase. With online sales of almost 175 billion, Suntours Online Store has grown as one of the biggest online stores in Finland.
Online sales
+25%
annual increase
Conversion
+14%
annual increase
mobile purchases
+80%
annual increase
trip booking
+20%
annual increase
Overall User Experience
4.13 / 5
year average of 2017 (N=42000)
Awards
