- Client
- STA Travel
- Client industry
- Travel
- Client location
- London, UK
- Project time
- 10 months (2012-13)
- Project delivery
- On-site
- Services provided
- Research
UX design
Visual design
Front-end development
User testing
A visual re-skin and rebranding project of the STA website, a site for booking flights, hostels, hotels, tours, and for travel inspiration and information. The project also involved concept ideation and pitching of new sales, inspiration and informational ideas to the business. The work was based heavily in user research, UX 'expert design' methods, and user validation testing.
Discovery
Before OWC came on board, STA had approached a design agency to undertake a redesign of their UK web site's homepage and flight category landing page. This work established the design language and direction of the UI, though there was more to be explored. The remainder of the site, including core functionality had not been addressed in this redesign.
This engagement was in affect to take over, and to commence a UX audit and review of this new design, and the other areas of the STA website. To evolve the agency design as the discovery work progressed. This work would eventually explore and establish new customer-centric site ideas to grow traffic, sales and better serve disparate site content.
Challenges
The work was done as part of STA Travels global team in London. There was a chance that feathers would be ruffled without the individual country teams being involved.
Process
This task was approached by first identifying and reworking user journeys on site areas identified by the business priorities. This involved sketching out journeys and wireframe ideas with pen and paper before digitizing them. Wireframes and visual designs were produced once the concepts were agreed with the business. The work was on an ‘expert review’ basis from UX design 'know-how' as well as considering wider common conventions across other travel booking websites, contemporary design best practices and trends. The aim was to improve the user experience of these identified areas.
OWC conducted site audits and competitor research, made and documented recommendations, fostered agreement amongst stakeholders, produced wireframes, facilitated 'guerrilla' user testing, and produced visual designs before writing markup to hand over the builds to the in-house developers.
The work was ‘guerrilla’ tested to validate insights and UX design thinking.
Outcome
OWC delivered a better more considered web site than that which had existed before. Transactions were up, page bounce rates were down, and STA was left in a good position to hire a permanent member of staff to take over. OWC worked with a good bunch of people whom where accommodating to user-centred design techniques and we enjoyed our time with this client.
