Last summer I had the wonderful experience of being a marketing and design intern for Trekaroo.
In addition to doing copywriting and SEO work for their marketing team, I was also tasked with developing and proposing a redesign for their website in order to increase traffic specifically towards their Trekaroo Trips page, which hosts their family vacation packages. These vacation packages also contribute to a major portion of the company's revenue.
Before starting the redesign to increase the usability and CTP of the website, I had to first determine the audience I was designing for, and then create my design around the constraints of these Trekaroo's users. By catering the design to these users, I was sure that it would attract them to interact with these site pages.
After getting the chance to interview some of Trekaroo's key users, I was able to define their key interests and motivations when using any site like Trekaroo for planning family travel.
I asked these users to name their top three things when viewing a website like Trekaroo and what they would look for specifically and these were what they provided me with :
A majority of our users, were parents looking for trustworthy pre-planned travel for their family vacations. They would look at the trip description to see if they are interested in booking a trip first over anything else.
After looking at the trip details, the next thing that would affect their decision would be the pricing options. A lot of users exclaimed that sometimes they are really excited about the trip details but then realize the price is out of their range, so to save their own time, knowing the upfront price would be nice.
The third thing was customization. A lot of these families have a hard time finding a service or trip package that fits the needs of their kids. They would be persuaded to purchase a trip if they saw that the trips could be customizable and cater the specific needs of their typically younger children.
This is the current standing design of the Trekaroo Trips webpage. Here you can see the main page where the different trip packages are displayed, and also an individual trip page. I was tasked with redesigning both of these pages.
After looking at the current design, I made some notes which helped me form insights about the problems with the existing design, and what I should address in the final design.
These insights included :
When I was doing competitive research, I noticed that most travel websites included a lot of visuals to keep their potential customers intrigued and engaged. Looking at Trekaroo, there were images included, but they didn't draw the customer in to view more about the trip. Also with our target audience, they don't have as much time to look through every section, so including more visuals would in turn catch their eye and increase the site's click-through-potential.
A lot of the information seemed off with its alignment or cramped on the page. Trekaroo has a ton of great travel information, but users indicated that it felt overwhelming or a lot to read. By creating an organized content structure, users can find the information they are looking for right away, and if they want to read, they know what they are looking at based on the sections the information is organized into.
Finally, the site lacks personality of the Trekaroo brand. There are no key elements or UI that create a cohesive feel and look of the brand. By showing the solid brand identity or theme, it reassures the customer that Trekaroo is an organization that takes care of the little details, from their website to family trip planning. By creating a consistent graphic theme, it gives a professional look to the website and speaks volumes about Trekaroo as an organization.
Keeping these insights in mind, I was able to mockup what the the main Trekaroo Trips page, and the individual trip page would look like. As you can see, the final design is more visual and information is organized and grouped using the proximity principle so that one can easily pick up the information they are looking for while scanning the page. I employed more of the white space to make the webpage feel less cluttered, because after all Trekaroo is built on the idea of making travel planning less overwhelming and easier. I also decided to create a brand theme by using the purple from the Trekaroo logo to be an accent color to highlight important information on the website.
Working for Trekaroo was a wonderful experience. Having never really designed a website before, this was a great challenge. I learned a lot about designing with the principle of responsive design in mind, and conceptualizing an interface that would fit across multiple devices. It was also great to practice certain visual and graphic design skills, and I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity with working with the marketing team, because it allowed me to conduct valuable user research and provided me a good foundation to build my visual design of off the interests and comments of these users.
