Pathworks.co | Product Performance Consulting

BoutiqueHotels.com

What they wanted

BoutiqueHotels.com is a niche online travel startup specializing in the boutique hotel bookings space. This privately funded venture was looking to raise its next round of investment. BoutiqueHotels.com had just launched their prototype with 5 destinations and had run some initial PPC campaigns to test the product.

Conversion data from the initial campaigns did not meet expectations. Campaign data showed that people coming to the site were baling almost immediately, with bounce rates and time-on-site metrics for a large percentage of non-generic keywords at the end of the spectrum.

BoutiqueHotels.com approached us to find out why –was there something about the user experience that was causing tangible blockers or was it a problem of perception around the product?

The Project

What they wanted

BoutiqueHotels.com is a niche online travel startup specializing in the boutique hotel bookings space. BoutiqueHotels.com had just launched their MVP and had run some initial PPC campaigns to test the product.

The Mission

what we did

Conversion data from the initial campaigns did not meet expectations – the client approached us to find out why - was there something about the user experience that was causing tangible blockers or was it a problem of perception around the product?

The Result

what happened

We made improvements to the UI of all PPC landing pages and made the booking flow more fluid. The final result? Our client met their cost of customer acquisition targets in key territories with the steady stream of bookings that came through their next campaign.

what we did

Analytics could only highlight the problem, so the first thing we did was install a video recording tool to capture all users sessions. What we discovered was that users weren’t baling at all –since all the content about the hotel (including the rates) were shown on the same page, the user could get nearly everything they needed from a single page visit without exploring the site any further.

Our client was relieved, but we still needed to find out why visits were not translating to sales.

We conducted some qualitative research with current customers. From the feedback we gathered, we then developed user personas and walked through various critical functions and user flows. These personas were used to assess whether our client had really nailed product market fit.

In addition, we conducted some ‘hallway testing’ at boutique hotels in Miami with travellers who fit the profile of their user personas.

Our findings had significant impacts for the overall look and feel of the site. At least 60% of users tested thought they had landed on the actual hotel’s site that they had been searching for, because of the photography quality and understated branding used throughout. This was causing users to bale before they looked at the rest of the portfolio.

To address this we worked with the BoutiqueHotels.com development team to change the UI and design on PPC Landing pages. We also made improvement on the booking flow based on our extensive research of competitor websites and introduced features that would help the customer browse and save properties easily. We then devised and conducted some remote usability tests to ensure that we were hitting the sweet spot with our target audience before launch.

what happened

Bounce rate went down significantly on PPC Landing Pages, and we saw a significant increase in stickiness and engagement throughout the site.

Our client very quickly pushed out a new release to solve some of the availability issues customers had also complained about which boosted the inventory of rooms up by 220%.

The final result? Our client met their cost of customer acquisition targets in key territories with the steady stream of bookings that came through their next campaign.