Agoda, a Southeast Asian online travel marketplace owned by the Booking Holdings group, has been a game-changer in the travel industry. As of June 2021, Agoda boasts a staggering 2.5 million properties worldwide.
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Cart & Trip Planning
After 15 years of listing and selling hotels, Agoda decided to spread its wings and venture into other areas such as flights, vacation rentals, and activities. The company's vision evolved from "selling hotels at the best price" to "becoming a travel companion." This is the story of our team's journey from researching, ideating, and building a one-stop-shop travel experience on Agoda.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Year
2021
Company
Agoda
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Agoda.
Why we expanded?
The Business of Travel
These new offerings, such as flights and things to do, have low commission margins compared to hotels. Some of the business reasons for expanding into these new categories were as follows:
Retain customers by providing everything on a single platform
Allow for more significant discounts for repeat customers
Offer pre-made travel packages
To realize this vision of moving Agoda from just selling hotels to a one-stop shop for booking everything related to travel, we needed to build new capabilities and rethink our platform's experience. In Q2 of 2021, I joined this newly created packages team assigned with this task, and I partnered with one associate designer, 2 product managers, and over 25 engineers.
The approach
Short term vs long term
One of the first challenges I faced was getting all stakeholders to agree on the project's approach.
Approach 1: Build e-commerce like Cart and enable booking multiple items. Implement and get to market quickly, gather feedback, and iterate.
Approach 2: Research how people book travel, form a long-term product vision, break it into features and implementable milestones, and continue gathering feedback and iterating.
I favored the second approach for the reasons as follows.
As Agoda has majorly been a hotel listing platform, we never really researched how people plan their overall trip, and the research may uncover things we did not know beforehand.
Not forming any long-term vision can lead to unanticipated scalability problems. I had seen this pattern before in other Agoda projects, where we built experiences to deliver projects faster, only to realize that they were not interoperable or scalable; and we ended up spending more time rebuilding them. Scalability isn’t important, until it suddenly is.
To align everyone, I decided to present to all the stakeholders how this experience may scale beyond an e-commerce Cart and why it is essential to form a longer-term vision and work backward from there.
Research
How do people plan their trips?
I started by partnering with Agoda's product insights team to better understand travelers' actions, needs, and values as they prepare for a trip. We conducted a diary study to get a better picture of the traveler's process. The goal was to uncover things we did not know beforehand, not to confirm our expectations
Following are five topics that emerged from the research:
🤑 Travelers are not loyal
Travelers compare flight, hotel, and activity alternatives across numerous online travel platforms and aggregators, frequently with no intention of booking. Few passengers have a strong emotional or loyal attachment to any online travel platform. Instead, they return because it is convenient, simple, or offers the best value.
😥 Experience a lot of anxiety
Travelers face a myriad of decisions throughout their journey, each with its own set of trade-offs. Despite their best efforts to plan for the most favorable outcome, they often grapple with fear and anxiety before and after booking.
📝 Have to keep track of a lot
Travelers must organize and share all artefacts of their journey (beyond what they generate on Agoda), including everything from confirmation emails to receipts and images. Especially when the bookings are from different platforms, it takes a lot of time and mental effort to keep track of everything.
🗓 Flight, Hotels, and Activities are booked at different stages
Travelers book Flights, Hotels, and Activities in different time frames leading to the trip. They generally start by booking a flight, followed by hotels or vacation rentals and, in the end, Activities or events. If given the option, they do prefer to book things like Airport transfers along the way.
🎯 Travelers don't book everything in one sitting.
Comparing, selecting, and going through the same booking processes drains energy, so travelers generally take their time and complete all the bookings in multiple short sessions.
And, some more data
After uncovering all the insights, we then analyzed our internal data to see whether there was any correlation with the findings.
We found 72% of customers who book multiple hotels or flights in their trip don't book everything on the same day; instead, they return several days later.
We also found that 45 % of travelers book hotels the same day or the day before they travel (-1,0 and 1). People prefer to book flights in advance, with only 15% of bookings being same-day or one day earlier.
User Journey
Background: The following wireframes explore the journey of a user who is planning a trip from Stockholm to Bangkok from 10th to 20th January.
Wireframes
The best story wins
After the research and the data we looked at, it was clear that travelers' trip planning doesn't end with their first booking, and they come back and book their whole trip in multiple sessions. This opens up opportunities to know the customer and pitch the right item they would want to add. Our goal was to design an experience that adapts to users' behavior and helps them progressively build their itinerary.
It was time for my team and I to present our vision to all the stakeholders from different teams(not just tech) and create alignment. We kept the discussion on the level of the wireframes to direct everyone's focus from visual to UX flows. Here are a handful of the presentation's highlights.
1. Add to cart
- The user will browse through the listings in Bangkok and will look for their ideal hotel.
- After selecting, users will be given the option to "Book now" or "Add to cart" on the property page.
- Discounts can be shown next to the "Add to cart" CTA to encourage people to book more items.
- After clicking Add to Cart, the item will be added to cart and the user will be notified. The cart's entry point will remain persistent and accessible from all pages.
2. Functional cart
- Users will see contextual up-sells such as "breakfast for two" after clicking and landing on Cart.
- Based on the user's current location, our smart suggestions will display the cheapest flight option available.
3. Auto-generated trip
- We take the initial booking as a starting point to automatically generate a trip and offer helpful suggestions so that users may continue to customize their trip with Agoda.
- Bundle and save messages can be used to persuade users to purchase more add-ons and items.
4. Adapting to the needs of our users
- At this point, users will return to their regular routines, but as the trip approaches, we encourage them to return and seek for additional items. This will be accomplished through many channels such as the Booking email, notification, and App homescreen.
- A timeline will be displayed with their hotel booking and suggested flight, which will be consistent across all Agoda platforms.
5. Customizable and shareable itinerary
- When users return to Agoda, their trip will appear on the Home page, and clicking on it will take them to a detailed view of their trip. Using the share icon, the entire itinerary may be readily shared.
- From here, the user has the choice of selecting one of the suggested flight options or seeing other options.
6. Add items directly to cart
- After selecting a flight, the user can go directly to Cart from the trips page.
- Based on the user's flight and hotel booking, our smart suggestions will display the cheapest airport transfer option.
Check out the link to learn more about all the different iterations and multiple rounds of discussion we had.
WHIMSICAL (password: Trips)
Next steps
Building a roadmap
Building all of the systems required to realize this vision was a significant task for the company. We urged the team to build scalable solutions with the larger vision in mind by unifying all stakeholders in a shared direction.
Although building Cart remained our immediate goal, our measurement of success shifted significantly. We began to see the cart as a stepping stone that would enable us to do things like:
- Book multiple products in a single booking
- Provide better discounts for booking multiple products
- Functionality up-sell cross-product items
The Design team was essential in shaping the product roadmap by pitching the long-term vision.
Here's a rough outline of our two-year plan:
Phase 1. Cart MVP
By the end of 2021, we expect to launch Cart MVP on Mobile Web and, by Q2 2022, on all other platforms. The phase 1 MVP will be stripped-down, with no activities booking, product cross-sells, or up-sell.
Phase 2. Trip planning MVP
By Q3 2022, we plan to deliver an MVP version of Trip-planning based on our built-in Cart capabilities. This early Trip-planning version will include features like "Auto generated Trips" and "Itinerary." In addition, we intend to implement up-sells and cross-sells on Cart simultaneously.
Phase 3. Themed packages
Agoda will be able to provide themed packages to their consumers by the holiday season of 2022. A "True Travel shopping experience" will be enabled via a feature-rich Cart and Trip planner.
Phase 1 - Approach
Move fast and go lean
We began by prioritizing all features and dividing them into achievable milestones. To get it up and running quickly, I decided to rely extensively on existing components from the current design system. I also choose to do bi-weekly design reviews with the entire team and involve developers early in the planning process. It also provided me with early insights on implementation and easy-to-build ideas. To help with this from a design standpoint, I created a design roadmap that the team would evaluate and align on frequently.
But first, What is Cart?
Cart will be a staging area, where customers can park one or more products they’re interested in (under consideration for buying) while they a) Continue to shop around or b) Defer the decision until later.
And, why name it “Cart”?
The term "cart" is more commonly associated with an e-commerce platform than with a travel platform. The team spent a disproportionate amount of time brainstorming with multiple names like Trips, Bag, Itinerary and few others. I decided to partner with the Branding team to conduct a survey and here are the results. The features of multi-booking was immediately understood by the participants when they heard the phrase "cart," maybe due to its widespread use in e-commerce platforms. For the time being, we've decided to call it Cart.
MVP Hypothesis
#1: Hypothesis: 84% of customers do not book right away; instead, they return several days later to do so. These customers will be able to add things to their cart and retrieve them conveniently when they return to book, increasing conversion.
- Measurement: Increase in conversion (search -> booking) and thus increase in overall bookings
- Linking to the vision: This will assess benefit of cart to single product bookings till we have multiple travel products
#2: Hypothesis: ~20% of bookers make >1 bookings on Agoda for the same trip. Customers will be able to add multiple products to their cart and check out in one step, rather than having to restart the process on Agoda or return to MSEs. Multi-product booking will be improved as a result of this.
- Measurement: Increase in products per booking (PPB) and thus increase in overall bookings
- Linking to the vision: This will assess impact of cart towards getting customers to buy multiple travel requirements on Agoda
#3 - Negative hypothesis/risks- 16% of bookers are instant bookers, meaning they browse and book the same day. Cart might help people feel less rushed by encouraging consumers to add products to their cart and return later, after which their item status may have changed. This may prompt them to cancel the reservation.
- Measurement: Decrease in conversion (search to booking) and thus decrease in overall bookings
We planned to launching cart if all metrics are flat with positive behaviors.
Introducing Cart
Users can store one or more things they're interested in buying in their Cart while they shop around. It also allows them to book everything at once, rather than having to repeat the same booking steps over and again.
Consistent and easily accessible
Cart will have a permanent and easy-to-find location on the home, search, property, and Trips pages, making it easy for users to enter and exit while browsing.
Bundle and save!
With each additional product added to the cart and booked, users can get extra savings.
Lean, yet functional
Items are simple to select, unselect, and delete. Users can add products to their cart and return later to complete the booking.
Countless edge cases
We had to deal with a long variety of edge cases because Cart is a cross-functional solution. This allowed us to gain buy-in and collaborate with all of Agoda's major teams.
Phase 2 - Approach
Trip Planning
We began phase 2 of our project, trip planning, in January 2022. Travelers must keep track of a lot when planning a trip, as our user research revealed. Trip planning allows users to plan their trips without having to do any homework, study, or ask around. This feature is also being developed to encourage users to book all of their travel through Agoda. Trips will replaces the current “Manage my bookings” page and will be used for all the things like cancellations, submitting reviews etc (which I haven't addressed in these designs).
Here are some of the initial concepts
Phase 1 complete
The first launch
We successfully released Cart on MWeb in December 2021, complete with all of its multi-booking and bundle-saving features. By the end of Q2 2022, we hope to have it available for iOS and Android. We're also doing user testing sessions and hope to improve the user experience in Cart V2 in a number of ways.
Introducing Trips
Traveling is associated with fun, adventure, and relaxation, but it also comes with its own set of worries, one of which is PLANNING THE TRIP! This feature allows users to plan their trips without having to do any homework, study, or ask around.
Personalized and Auto generated
A new personalized Trip is created when users visit Agoda, search, and make a new booking. They can use the Homepage widget or the bottom navigation to get there.
Popular and Off-beat places
The majority of people are unfamiliar with all of the cities and attractions in the area they are visiting. Trips uses Agoda's recommendation system to recommend popular and off-the-beaten-path destinations around the world.
What’s trending
By selecting a city, the user will be taken to a personalized city suggestions page that includes information such as the most instagrammable spot, local activities on specific dates, and contextual information about VISA, transportation, weather, and more.
IN closing
Long way to go
The team is just getting started, and the plan is to add more features and improve the user experience in the coming months. My team and I learned a lot throughout this project's journey, including:
- Taking a long-term perspective really helped in aligning all stakeholders on a common direction and encouraging teams to build scalable systems that can be used by future products to build on top of
- Research was extremely helpful in understanding the travelers' pain points and designing features and experiences to make their lives easier.
- Moving quickly and involving developers early in the design process allowed us to gain early insights and design solutions that were simple to implement.
Coming soon
We plan to launch Trips in Q3 2022 and gradually add features such as suggestions and upsells. One of our long-term goals is to develop a list of popular pre-planned trips so that travelers have more options.