City Wonders
City Wonders is the largest tour operator by volume in Europe, basing growth on operational expansion and excellence. When I came on board as Head of Content and Marketing, it was ready to make the same commitment to content and UX.
The company had a website redesign slated to continue building on its culture of innovation and massive industry presence. The goals were to stay abreast of competition, as well as increase direct user sales against its lucrative but costly partnership with Viator.
Heading up UX content strategy, I joined a cross-functional team made up of the best and brightest. In the coming months we achieved great things together, re-launching the City Wonders website as the travel industry standard, and achieving a 36% increase in YoY revenue.
Approaching problems with Design Thinking and managing process with Lean UX were fundamental to success.
After shipping our MVP, I partnered with the Head of Online to create a culture of data around design decisions, implementing user interviews, usability studies, user recordings, heat maps, and A/B testing.
1) New Homepage
As a member of the team tasked with creating a new digital experience for City Wonders, I was heavily involved in defining new requirements and UX solutions. Specifically, I was in charge of all featured copy, images and video, as well as the UI necessary to feature them in the most engaging way.
When the site launched in early 2016, the industry was on the cusp of redefining what it meant to take tours. I pushed heavily for this change, and provided the creative, conceiving them as experiences. The messaging "Experience More" and "Experience" instead of "Tour" became ubiquitous. Airbnb followed suit with Airbnb Experiences over 6 months later.
It was also necessary to redefine the value proposition to reflect the specific needs and expectations of the personas we created. To fit the case, I developed a "City Wonders Promise" component that could be inserted on any page highlighting reviews, guides, expertise, and customer service.
Check out the OLD CITY WONDERS HOMEPAGE for a comparison.
For an example of new ad hoc content assets check out the new VATICAN PARTNERSHIP VIDEO I produced.
2) New Category Page
Category pages posed their own sets of challenges, not least because of their cost in PPC campaigns. As a primary window of entry for inbound traffic, it was fundamental to leverage user intent with all the solutions City Wonders offered for their travel needs.
In addition to the copy, images and containers, I developed specific assets like the Vatican Tours banner to provide users with engaging navigation options, as well as 'plant the seed' for additional CTAs they would be prompted with later in their journey.
Check out the OLD CITY WONDERS CATEGORY PAGE for additional perspective.
3. New Product Page
The tour pages saw the biggest makeover. As a team we developed the sector's first floating booking widget as part of the concept layout, as well as a dynamic tour gallery and tour value proposition to host loads of more visual content to project users into their future tour.
Check out the OLD CITY WONDERS PRODUCT PAGE to compare.
I also headed the project to re-adapt multiple video assets that were sitting dead in the DAM so that they could be featured with correct branding in the redesign.
I was solely in charge of the City Wonders blog redesign and relaunch. I picked my favorite team member (a gifted visual designer) to plot it out during some wonderful pair design sessions.
Bringing the user into the transformative experience of travel, while establishing the brand as the experts to follow was again the cornerstone of my strategy. I also came up with 'CW On the Go', and developed a new information architecture. The skeleton of the new blog just needed some meat to go live.
4. New Blog Homepage
5. New Blog Post Page
It's hard to measure how far something's come without knowing where it's been, so check out the OLD CITY WONDERS BLOG.