BetterUI Challenge: Hey Booking.com Can You Try & Test Exposed Options?
Booking.com has a nice homepage - but it could be better. So today I'm openly challenging their homepage in a very simple way. First, I am predicting that the Exposed Options pattern that surfaces clear and beneficial choices will generate more property searches (hopefully followed by more bookings). Secondly and more exciting, I am also challenging you to beat and improve upon our concept by sharing your optimization ideas in the comments. We'll then encourage booking.com to test both our and your variations together. You in?
In More Detail Here Is What We Need From You:
- Look at our top variation B (shown below) and for each UI improvement that you think will drive more searches (and deeper bookings), share it as a comment.
- Multiple comments are fine but keep each comment tied to 1 idea for easier prioritization
- Vote on your own or other people's ideas and let's try to surface the best ones to the top
- Tweet-Challenge Booking.com to make this happen (I picked Stuart Clarke-Frisby & Andy Warburton to take on the challenge) :)
Variation B: Our Challenger Concept
Here is one of our very simple concepts for booking.com to a/b test which contains the Exposed Options pattern as the key change.
- Exposed Work Options
Booking.com already shows the option to answer the "are you travelling for work?" question with a simple "yes" or "no". This however isn't very clear why it's being asked. It's prying into the privacy of the user without providing much benefit. When one hovers over the tool-tip, it can be discovered that answer "yes" really means "wifi", "free parking" and "breakfast" priority. So, in our concept all that we're doing is exposing these 3 options right away on the homepage. These are highly beneficial choices which some users could care about.
How Do I Know It Will Win?
It's not me, it's the pattern. Although I am never 100% certain, I am very confident on this one because I have observed 6 past a/b tests with similar changes in Datastories Pattern #14. We have gathered 5 positive out of 6 tests with a median +9.8% effect. So that's what we're using to predict this. Here is a sample:
Variation C: Share Your Best Ideas + Vote On Comments
Now onto your turn. Please share your own ideas on how we can improve variation B. Just a reminder, please keep 1 comment to 1 idea. Ready? Let's do this.
Tweet Challenge Booking To Encourage The Test
If you'd like to help and make this happen, nudge Booking a little to encourage some open experimentation. Here is a tweet link that you could use:
Tweet To Booking To Encourage Them To Test This
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Comments
Ali Jaffar 7 years ago ↑0↓0
I think this does a MUCH better job at gathering relevant information regarding the booking. Imagine they have 1million+ bookings and they only have a Y or N answers, which would really provide them with not much value if they want to analyze their customer data.
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Pierre 7 years ago ↑0↓0
Hi Jakub. Very interesting concept here. In absolute terms, it looks like a clear winner. In Booking.com particular case, i share Joao Bosco skepticism on the goal of the radio button. Booking.com has been trying for some years now to corner the business travel industry in a more structured way (https://www.booking.com/business.en-us.html) with a specific offer. So they could be trying to increase their understanding of the evolution of the business traveler requirements and for that need an yes/no answer to the question.
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Joao Bosco 7 years ago ↑0↓0
Hi Jakub! In my opinion booking.com use this radio button not just to show better results for the user but thinking in product strategies, maybe interesting in the corporate travel segment i Guess. So if it is true, the second option is interesting for the user but doesnt give clear results. What do you think?
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Jakub Linowski 7 years ago ↑1↓0
Hey Joao. I was just focused on getting more searches / bookings with this idea. But independently of how the question is framed, the same logic can be passed to the backend (ex: choosing "wifi" can still technically mean "business/work context").
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Vincent 7 years ago ↑1↓0
For hotel owners traveling for business means more than wifi, parking and/or breakfast.
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Jakub Linowski 7 years ago ↑0↓0
Maybe that's yet another idea? Convey the meaning of "work/business" in other ways?
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eurydice13 7 years ago ↑0↓0
These days I assume that EVERYWHERE has wifi. It's desks and printers that are impossible to find. (except at CitizenM hotels, which I LOVE)
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