Coming Soon — UX & Usability Audit: Hotel Room Price Search on 6 Travel Apps
TD;LR — There is a lot of room for improvement.
From among the usual apps for Mail/Messaging/Photos/Food… Travel apps are one which I use quite a lot.
I love traveling and routinely browse for hotel listings in order to get a good deal, months in advance.
I do have a pain-point.
It takes me a lot of taps and steps to figure out the total price/all-inclusive what the stay will cost me.
Hence, thought of doing a UX & Usability Audit of all the travel apps I have on my phone and see how each of them fares on their own from an end-user (me) perspective and also do a comparison with each other.
Initially, I had planned to do only the Price Listing screen but one thing led to another and I couldn’t resist doing the end to end flow audit.
I had thought of posting all in one post but considering I ended up auditing upwards of 20+ screens, it will be a massive lengthy post and overwhelming at that. Hence will share each App Audit as a separate post for ease of accessing, reading and also for future reference.
The app I have chosen are — Booking.com, MakeMyTrip, GoIbibo, Yatra, Cleartrip and Agoda.
Device — iPhone 7 Plus
Platform — iOS 12.1.4
Note — I may do a separate UX Audit for the web-experience of these apps. But considering I do most of the steps on my phone, it made sense to do the audit for the app first.
I do not have actual data but I presume a LOT more people browse and a small part of them “convert” and end up booking/buying. For deals which have “free cancellation” right till the end, even this cannot be taken as “conversion” unless the period of “free cancellation” has elapsed or the user actually goes on that trip.
Which makes it a challenging exercise for everyone (PM, Design, Tech, Marketing, Customer Support) involved as to what and how they should do to increase their conversion rates.
TD; LR
- Booking.com continues to offer unmatched experience as far browsing for hotels go.
- Most apps do not show the price including GST which delays my decision making as I do not know upfront how much I would have to pay. Also, the price calculation is convoluted at best with many extra charges and discounts.
- Excluding Booking.com and Agoda, all others have some form of stickiness and/or membership/wallet program to lure customers in and on a repeat basis. In the recent past, I have booked either from MakeMyTrip or GoIbibo as each of them has WalletCash where-in I earn money from each booking and which I can use for subsequent bookings. Both also have very good deals randomly.
- It pays to keep looking at various apps and at various times, you never when you get lucky!
- For me, the final price (including deals, cash back, etc) is the deciding factor, whether I have booked from the app before or not is immaterial. Loyalty is up for grabs each and every time I want to book a hotel.
- The layout of how the information is presented plays a non-trivial role and if done well, speeds up the decision-making process significantly.
- WhatsApp integration once you check out is very helpful as WhatsApp is always on my home screen of the app and travel info is easy to search (I do not have more than 2–3 chat at any point of time) for in contrast to remembering which app I used to book and then open the app to get my travel details.
- Visibility of a customer hotline number in case of any issues leads to a perception of trust and is very reassuring, especially when I am traveling with my family (with a kid). Though I always pray and hope I never end up in a situation when I actually have to call them.
- Payment integrations with Paytm, PhonePe and the ability to save my card details increases the speed of check-out and also helps to remove any frictions to scale.
- Zero-fees and Zero-interest EMIs is likely to increase the conversion and make me choose a hotel which was not originally in my budget. Since I am paying in parts, the wallet pinch is significantly less than if I pay the total amount, be it via Credit Cards or NetBanking.
- Agoda and Booking.com opened the fastest for me. It took me several attempts to even capture the Splash screen as it went directly and instantly to the Search page.
- Standard selection flow for Search is Location/Hotel — Dates — Occupancy, additional filters (Family, Solo, Star rating, etc).
User Goal & Motivation
The user received a Bonus at work. To celebrate, he wants to take his wife and 2-year-old son to Goa and stay in Grand Hyatt only.
User Persona
The user is a 38-year-old male, working in an IT company in Bangalore and doing reasonably well in his job. Married for 5 years and has a 2-year-old son. User is very price-conscious but doesn’t mind splurging once in a while.
User-flow
Broadly there are 4 steps from a user’s viewpoint —
- Search
2. View search results & hotel listing
3. Select room
4. Review & Checkout
For the purpose of this UX Audit, I am not including Checkout as this step is fairly consistent in all apps with a few changes here and there.
I love to travel and doing these audit made me realize how small things matter not only from a UX point of view but also may help in conversions and impact the business directly. After all, Design is about achieving business objectives essentially.
