Bringing itineraries to Headout
A new feature focused on helping users plan better and get a sense of what to expect when they an experience
Timeline
6 months
incl. Design, BE and FE
Focuses on
3 categories
Default, Hop on hop off and cruises
Role
Product designer
THE PROBLEM STATEMENT
Why is it required?
Our current approach to informing users about their experiences is flawed. Unstructured and lengthy paragraphs leads to readability issues and makes it difficult to display the required information in a limited space. Moreover, the content lacks adaptability across different categories.
How can we simplify content consumption and ensure flexibility across various scenarios?
Obvious issues with current approach
Content overload
Reliance on external links to view the actual itinerary
Low visibility
Little to no customization options for different categories
🥁🥁 This highlights the need for structured and flexible itineraries.
THE RESEARCH PHASE
How did we arrive at what we want to do?
Hop on hop off
Stops and nearby things to do
CRUISES
Boarding points and sites one would have a view of
DAY TRIPS
Things covered, inclusions and activites
We also conducted competitor analysis, exploring both major OTAs and niche leaders to validate our approach. During this process, we aimed to identify the shortcomings of existing itinerary solutions, which helped shape our strategy.
INTERNAL PROCESS
How would itineraries be created internally?
Our team prioritized a long-term, robust solution over a quick, hacky fix. (Super proud of the team for this!)
We identified current and anticipated future use cases to help us grow with a long-term vision.
Leveraging Headout's existing content management tool, we seamlessly integrated the itinerary feature. Our solution included:
Category-specific templates: We started with three templates for day trips, hop-on hop-off tours, and cruises.
Cost-effective map solution: By using OpenStreetMaps, we reduced expenses while giving ourselves the ability to customize these maps.
Map editor: We integrated a feature that allows us to modify and visualize routes for any itinerary.
By taking this approach, we have established a scalable solution for both today and the future.
Note: We focused on improving the UX of the internal tool. For the UI, we utilized an open-source UI library to reduce effort on our side and accelerate the development process.
SOLUTION
What does our end feature look like?
By having custom templates in our internal tool, we made it easier for us to create different formats for displaying itineraries for different types of experiences.
At this moment, we have templates for hop on hop off, day trips and cruises live at this moment.
#1: Day trips
Given the high average order value of day trips, we've decided to provide the user with detailed information before they make a booking. Our day trip itinerary includes:
Boarding point with how to get there information
Comprehensive stop details and descriptions
Highlights for each stop with images
Notable passing landmarks
Clear indication of any additional costs
Mapped route
This approach ensures users have a thorough understanding of their experience, from start to finish, enhancing confidence in their booking decision.
#2: Hop on hop off tours
When it comes to hop on hop off tours, user would want to know what's around each stop that they can visit. For Hop on hop off,
Different stop names
Distance between stops
Nearby things to do for each stop
Distance from stop to any attraction
Mapped route
There are more than a few possibilities of using itinerary for hop on hop off to benefit the users, I will cover those ideas towards end of the case study.
Hop on hop off itinerary
Find the location of any stop with ease
Nearby things to do: Know what's around each stop with information to discover hidden gems
Future: Add links to experiences for each of these nearby things to do and upsell them
Includes almost everything from day trips template with few tweaks
#3: Cruises
For cruises, we took a different approach. Stops for a cruise experiences are basically their boarding points and all the passing by landmarks are the ones the user would have a view from the cruise. Additionally, the menu is an important aspect of making user aware of their whole experience.
We decided to not limit ourselves with using the same itinerary UI for cruises as well.
Cruises itinerary
Descriptors to convey time related information about the experience
Carousels to view multiple boarding points as well as all the sites covered during the cruise
Map view for easy visualisation
WALK AHEAD
What more can we do with itineraries?
More categories
We plan to expand the capabilities of itineraries for lot of different categories in the future. The following is quick set of ideas from top of my head:
Guided tours
Compared to other itineraries which mostly happen in the outdoor, we can use the same capabilities for showing main attractions of indoor tours, eg. Louvre museum guided tour. We can highlight the main attractions of a museum using itineraries.
Zoos, aquariums or any ticketed commodity for that matter:
We can use the cruises' itinerary ability to convey to the user where they can collect their tickets and main attraction they should not miss in a more structured manner. Additional, these attractions can be mapped out once we figure out more nuanced maps.
Food tours, pub crawls and hiking trails:
All of these categories can use the itinerary setup to convey to the user the important things.
For hop on hop off
This part is already in works at the moment, we can use the existing hop on hop off itineraries to do the following:
Show what's the nearest stop from your current location
If I want to go to a particular attraction, what's the stop I should get down at or what's the ideal route from my current location
Using location permissions, we can show the user what's the next stop
These features work the best once the user has purchased the tickets and help in providing a seamless post-purchase experience to the user.
LEARNINGS
How did the launch go for us?
Itinerary adoption
~8%
for day trips
Impact on CVR
Flat
Day trip itineraries showed minimal impact, with flat-ish results.
Hop-on hop-off tours and cruises saw higher adoption rates, suggesting itineraries are more valuable for these experiences.
We're planning to reassess day trip adoption when we implement and experiment with a custom landing page for this category. This approach will help us better understand and optimise the impact of itineraries on day trips.
