Optimizing the Booking Experience

Research and design by Sarah Paulhus with the Barsala team
Summer 2020

INTRO

A better way to book.

In June of 2020 we launched a new Barsala.com with a new experience for browsing short term rentals across the country and booking your stay. While the first launch was successful, it still went live as a “minimum viable product” and very quickly we started to see what improvements could be made.

By August we had some initial results - We have a 17.6% conversion rate for checkout, or customers who made it all the way through the funnel from browsing, to clicking on “book now” to reserving and paying for their experience. While the 17.6% was a substantial number compared to total number of people that were coming to the site, it still left a lot of room for improvements. The team at Barsala came up with a series of experiments and improvements that we could test throughout the Fall. Each experiment required a competitive analysis of various hospitality and retail companies, as well as UX research to make sure the solutions we designed always kept the customer top-of-mind.

experiment one

Highlight cancellation policy

Problem

Through 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic, the need for postponement and cancellations on travel experiences went from a “nice-to-have” to an almost expected policy from any airline or hospitality company. Perhaps users were missing Barsala’s friendly cancellation policy and were hesitating to book. Therefore, if we emphasized this policy throughout the checkout experiment, users might be more inclined to buy.

Idea

While the cancellation info was included on the Checkout page on first launch, it was fairly hidden and placed underneath the “Complete Purchase” button. My proposed solution recommend we move this to directly above all checkout fields ensuring that users’ eyes would see it as they dove into filling out the checkout info. This also helped the user by informing them early and allowing them to decide whether to proceed with the effort of filling out the form.

experiment two

De-emphasize promo code input

Problem

Our checkout process was already lengthy, and we are constantly look for ways to make the form even lower friction. When it came to the Payment section, we noticed some users seem unsure what to do with the promo code field. This field was visible and always available, which we think possibly made some users question whether they had a promo code, or felt duped that they didn’t have a promo code to use. We worried that we were missing bookings because of the user’s hesitancy here.

Idea

If we hid or de-emphasized the promo code field, this would benefit both the user and our business. The users wouldn’t feel like this was a “must-have” for booking, and the business possibly saw more bookings in result. We solved this by adding an expandable line, which would read “Have a promo code?” and allow users to opt-in to using it, if they had one available.

experiment three

Create trust in the payment process

Problem

On occasion, we get some users who come to Barsala and feel like it might be a scam. Our current checkout process has no indication about what payment processing platform we use or what kind of cards we accept. One avenue for increasing user trust and therefore conversion might be to add these indicators. We looked into trust badges, payment processing logos, and credit card icons.

Idea

On our first experiment, we’ve decided to test out simply adding the top credit card payment icons. We think that showing the payment types accepted will increase trust and conversion. It also shows how intelligent the platform is, as the credit card icon in the number field will dynamically change based on your CC number input. Our second experiment included adding the Stripe badge below the payment field, an image that says “Powered by Stripe” to add trust through our payment processor.

experiment four

Increase urgency

Problem

Barsala will always look for more ways to increase conversion and one method that we’ve seen on other hospitality and retails sites is urgency messaging. From a psychological standpoint, discounts and Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) are highly effective ways to get more bookings.

Idea

We looked at several ways to integrate this messaging into our site. One place to put it was on the listing page (“look how popular this unit is!”). Another place could be on the checkout form (“Buy now to guarantee your rate!'“). There are also several ways to frame this messaging, whether it be around limited stock, hard-to-find value, displaying the end-date of a sale, showing popularity through number of bookings, how many people interested, etc. We decided to test out messaging around the popularity of a building. We think by highlighting this fact directly underneath the “Book” button will catch users eyes and instill confidence around the building/unit they are booking.

experiment five

Add ease and security to payments

Problem

Looking for more ways to increase conversion, we wanted to offer an even more frictionless payment method and lean into ways that users are more frequently transacting: through payment services like Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Idea

Because these services already have user’s payment data, they allow for an almost “one-click payment” on Barsala.com. They also add a level of guaranteed security, as Barsala then does not need to manage/store any payment data, and they and make it super easy for customers to pay on their mobile devices. We decided to add integrations for the most well-used payment platforms, including Apple Pay, GPay and PayPal.

Results

4.4x Increased Bookings

In my time working with the Barsala team and launching the redesigned booking engine, we saw an increase in online direct bookings by 4.4x. We increased company-wide bookings by 15% and launched our mobile reservation management and booking app with significant positive correlation with guest Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Barsala was also able to increase their percentage of direct bookings and see that percentage surpass the percentage of bookings made on their top partner platforms, with continuing growth.