Horizon 2: Doubling bookings through the IBE

Friction-free flight bookings

Re-designing S7 Airlines online booking system to increase online revenue by 76% in the year after launch.

Achieving a friction-free online travel booking experience is a pursuit for many airlines and rarely something that is achieved. Booking engines are often overly complex when they really don’t need to be and quite often the demands of the business overshadow the needs of the customer – simplicity is key, as is context, to ensure we don’t bombard people with options and choices.

Winner of a DBA Design Effectiveness Award for the redesign of S7 Airlines booking engine – see the award entry here

The heart of the airlines business success

S7 is Russia’s biggest airline and part of the Oneworld alliance. It operates flights to more than 80 destinations across 20 countries, including 45 destinations in Russia.

Our brief was to create the interaction design and visual language for S7’s new online booking system. It had to work across both web and mobile. It had to be simple and it had to reflect the unique brand position of S7 – to “Chase Happiness.” S7 like to do things differently and this should be no exception.

Often referred to as the most challenging of interaction design challenges, the online booking engine is at the heart of an airlines business success – driving bookings and often being the first touch point a customer will have with the brand.

Summary of results

76% increase in online revenue in the year after launch

40% increase in revenue

9% increase in average order value

Key States of the new booking engine

In close partnership with S7, we designed a booking experience that is as straightforward, and easy to use as possible. A guided booking experience that recognises your choices and doesn’t bombard you with options and customisations you don’t need. A light touch interaction design system can be orchestrated to create a fluid, simple and easy to use service.

We also used the principle of progressive reveal to alleviate information density and help with the ability to scan through the information. The design language uses colour to help the user identify key interactions.

Managing your itinerary and booking

The ‘Manage My Booking’ and ‘Itinerary’ pages are shown below. With the use of maps and rich photography, the user can begin to explore their destination and build anticipation ahead of their trip.

Destination and hotel hub pages use third party photography to build anticipation and balance the functional with the aspirational

 

The use of photography also helps the user to quickly explore destination accommodation more effectively

In addition to the online booking experience, we also redesigned the booking management layer – where the users can fine tweak their preferences

Finally a journey planner, gives users the added comfort of tracking all aspects of their travel in one platform

It’s a small but very good team of specialists. I was glad to work with them. They have a unique character, to make the impossible feasible in the time and budget.

Director of Product Development, S7 Airlines

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