Case study: easyJet online booking process

We worked with easyJet to re-design its online booking engine and produce an award-winning, six-step booking process to generate more sales.
 

The brief

To design a new, simplified booking process for the easyJet website that increases user satisfaction and overall revenue.

easyJet asked us and partner agencies Splendid and Conchango to create an innovative booking process for easyJet.com.

easyJet flew over 44m passengers in 2008. They are Europe’s fourth largest airline and a pioneer of online booking - offering customers the chance to book flights on their website since 1998. As other airlines have followed suit and more travellers prefer to book online, easyJet wanted to update their booking process and asked us to produce a user interface that would:

• Simplify the user experience
• Improve the way prices are shown
• Reduce drop-out rates
• Have a fresh, uncluttered look
• Allow for better integration of upscale products
• Increase revenue

The airline was keen not to alienate its online customers by making radical changes, so we were asked to keep the multi-step booking process they were familiar with.
 

What we did

As part of an iterative, user-centred design (UCD) process, we conducted research with easyJet customers and on competitive sites to produce a testable prototype and ultimately a new booking process.

Initially we focussed on understanding easyJet’s target audience. We had recently conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative research with the airline’s customers to recognise their behaviours, needs, motivations and common annoyances when booking flights online. These findings helped us to develop user profiles for our target audience. We also studied other airlines’ websites to gain a thorough knowledge of the competition.

In a collaborative design process, we worked with easyJet to develop the concept for the new interface from preliminary sketches to a high-fidelity, testable prototype. We conducted frequent testing with end-users and weekly workshops with our client and partner agencies to identify and resolve any usability problems as early as possible.

By the end of the eight-week project, we supplied easyJet’s team of developers with the functional, structural and visual design of the booking engine.
 

The results

An award-winning, six-step booking process that is more intuitive, informative and generates more revenue for our client.

Our in-depth research and usability studies led to a number of key modifications to easyJet’s booking engine including:

• A new fare finder with outbound and return flights next to each other, for easier price comparison, and a basket containing the total cost of the journey
• A more concise flight options page
• A new hotel booking interface – with destination information – laying the foundations for future growth into a multi-product, multi-entry point booking engine
• An improved car hire step giving users details on how to book a car with their flights
• A superior confirmation page with clear information layout and more space for easyJet to offer its customers relevant upsell products

Not only is easyJet’s new booking engine generating revenue of over £1billion a year, but our input also helped the airline to win the Silver award in the “Best Flight Booking Website” category at the British Travel Awards in November 2009.
 

What easyJet say:

“We worked closely with Flow to provide our customers with a simplified and appealing way to book their easyJet flights. We’re delighted with the look and usability of our new online booking engine and pleased that our customers have responded so well by voting for us at the British Travel Awards.”

Richard Levin, Head of eTail Development, easyJet
 

Visit the easyJet website (opens in new window)