How to improve the UX of your travel website

If you're here, chances are you're involved in inspiring wanderlust, creating excitement, and facilitating unforgettable journeys for travelers worldwide. In this article, we aim to help you create memorable experiences before your users even go on vacation. 

We’ve compiled a list of the top 10 UX tests you can conduct to improve the user experience of your travel website or app. These tests will help you understand how users interact with your site, what their expectations and preferences are, and how to address any pain points that may arise.

To help you get started, we’ll be linking to templates that you can use in Lyssna.

The insights gained from conducting these tests will have you jet-setting toward a well-designed and intuitive website that will set you apart from competitors, attract more users, and drive business growth.

1. Test your brand elements 

In the travel industry, users typically visit various sources and rely on recommendations from different platforms before making a decision. When someone interacts with one of your digital assets, for example, your email newsletter or your website, it's crucial to grab their attention and keep them interested.

Testing brand elements, such as messaging, iconography, and creative assets, can help make sure they’re memorable, engaging, consistent, and, overall, effective in communicating with users. And through continuous testing, you can significantly impact user engagement and satisfaction.

Consider a scenario where you’re wanting to start an email campaign that recommends travel packages. To enhance the effectiveness of the emails, you can conduct preference testing to see what layout, messaging, or content resonates most with users. 

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2. Validate and refine your booking process

If your users made it to the booking phase of the journey, then you’d assume you can count them as converted customers. But that’s not always the case. 

If your booking process is clunky and full of barriers, it may just be enough of a turn-off for the user to click out of your page. To make sure your process is streamlined and frictionless, you need to conduct a user flow analysis. 

This will help evaluate how users navigate through your website or app to accomplish specific tasks. By understanding user flows, you can identify bottlenecks and optimize the journey for smoother navigation and increased conversions.

Imagine you're working on a travel website. You decide to use the Refine your checkout process prototype test template and direct users to select a vacation package and proceed to book it. By analyzing the results, you can identify any friction points, like complicated forms or unclear navigation, which might discourage users from finalizing their bookings. 

3. Understand how users navigate your travel app or website

To make sure your travel app or website is delivering an intuitive and user-friendly experience, it’s important to conduct a navigation test. This allows you to identify pain points, optimize user journeys, and ultimately enhance user satisfaction.

Imagine a user, Sarah, planning her next vacation using your travel app. She wants to book a flight from New York to Paris for her upcoming trip. However, she finds it challenging to locate the flight search feature on your app due to a cluttered interface, confusing menus, and unclear labels. As a result, Sarah becomes frustrated and considers switching to a competitor's app for a smoother booking experience.

By conducting user navigation tests like clickstream analysis, heatmaps, and usability testing, you can pinpoint where users like Sarah encounter navigation obstacles. With these insights, you can redesign your navigation menu, improve search functionality, and optimize the booking process to provide a seamless user experience.

4. Test visual hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is how elements are arranged on a page so your eyes naturally go to what matters most. It's about helping you find the important information without even thinking about it.

This five second test ensures that key information is prominently displayed and is easily accessible, enhancing user engagement and comprehension.

For example, by evaluating the visual hierarchy of a hotel booking page on a travel app, you can make sure that pricing details, room options, and booking buttons are prominently positioned and differentiated to guide users toward the desired actions.

5. Assess how easily users can find destination information

There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to look for something on a website or app and not being able to find it, or the information isn't where you'd expect it to be.

This is where card sorting is beneficial. It helps you understand how users expect to find information and what categorization makes the most sense to them. 

Let’s bring back Sarah for this example. Sarah is planning a trip to London using your travel website. She wants to explore popular attractions, find nearby hotels, and discover local events. However, she struggles to locate this information on your site. 

The details are scattered across different pages or hidden within dropdown menus, making it challenging for her to plan her itinerary effectively. Frustrated by the disjointed user experience, Sarah explores other travel websites.

Through card sorting, you can ask participants to categorize and prioritize content related to attractions, hotels, and events. This test shows how users naturally group and expect to find this information, helping you guide the information architecture of your website.

6. Find out what features impact decision-making when booking a vacation

Researching and booking a vacation can be a complex process. There's a multitude of factors to consider, including timing (e.g. school breaks, seasons, annual leave), reviews and ratings, and even discounts.

Through testing, you can understand what your users prioritize when booking a holiday and make sure that these features are prominently displayed on your website, which can significantly improve conversion rates.

For example, a survey could focus on a specific factor, such as reviews. You could ask your target audience how they use reviews when booking a vacation. Questions could include how much they rely on reviews, what review sites they use, and when they rely on them the most (e.g. choosing a hotel, picking activities, deciding on restaurants). 

From the results, you can decide what impact reviews have on the decision-making process, where to display reviews on your site, and whether you’re using highly reputable review sites. 

7. Enhance website forms with preference testing

Website forms play an incredible role in facilitating communication and interaction between users and businesses. They enable you to engage with users, collect valuable data, generate leads, provide support, facilitate transactions, and gather feedback.

Due to the potential level of contact website forms have with your users, it makes sense to test and optimize them. 

Let’s say you want to enhance your flight search process. By setting up a preference test you can present participants with different forms that focus on elements like field placements, label styles, location on the page, or even how error messages are shown. Users can then choose their preferred layout. Based on the results, you can refine the form design, ultimately enhancing user satisfaction and boosting successful flight bookings.

8. Evaluate the effectiveness of your website's navigation menu

When users and potential customers visit your website, several key factors can influence whether they stay or leave, one of which is intuitive navigation. It's crucial to make sure that visitors can easily find the information they're looking for without getting lost in a maze of links. 

For example, say you want to test whether your users can find travel information easily and navigate through your website efficiently to book their next getaway. So you conduct a tree test. 

Your participants are presented with a text-based representation of your website's navigation structure, without any visual design elements. You then give them a specific task: "You're planning a romantic getaway to Europe. Find available vacation packages that include scenic views, historical landmarks, and romantic experiences."

From the results, you identify that certain destination categories are buried within submenus, hindering users' ability to find relevant vacation packages easily. You can now make the appropriate changes to these navigational challenges or inefficiencies. 

9. Check if your home page makes an impact

Travel industry sectors, such as accommodation, transportation (flights, buses, car rentals), attractions, and platforms like Trivago, are highly competitive. It’s important to make sure that when a user reaches your page, you capture their attention and they’re motivated to engage with your site. You want to leave a lasting impression so that users recollect your key messages and you encourage repeat visits. 

A five second test can help you uncover these valuable insights and guide you to make necessary adjustments to your home page.

For example, say you suspect your home page call-to-action (CTA) tagline is getting lost. Using a five second test, you show participants the home page visuals briefly (up to 20 seconds in Lyssna) and ask them to provide instant feedback on the most memorable elements and perceived brand message. 

From the results, you can make iterations to your CTA to make it the hero of the page.

10. Evaluate how intuitive your website design is

An intuitive website is important for delivering a seamless user experience, as it allows visitors to navigate effortlessly and find the information they need quickly. By minimizing confusion and frustration, an intuitive design boosts user satisfaction, encourages engagement, and reduces bounce rates. 

Additionally, websites that are easy to use are more likely to turn visitors into customers. This is because they make it simple for users to achieve their goals.

Imagine you're redesigning the home page of your travel site. First click testing can help to assess whether users can find what they're looking for with their initial click.

For example, you can present participants with tasks like "Find a beach resort in Hawaii", or “Where would you go to find our latest deals”. You could then analyze where they click first. This helps you identify potential navigation issues and optimize the placement of important features.

Time to pack your bags and get UX testing

Set your users on the path to a great journey before they even pack their bags by providing a smooth and enjoyable digital experience.

These top 10 UX tests will provide you with a thorough understanding of your target audience, their expectations, and the challenges they face while using your website or app.

By adopting a user-centric design approach and continually testing, you can differentiate yourself in this competitive market, enhance user satisfaction, and ultimately drive business success.