One of the main products of the company is a booking system for hotels, mainly in the German-speaking region of Europe.
The main task was to update the outdated system, improve the booking process, and solve problems with conversion and poor adaptation to mobile devices
Quick Intro
Seekda, a division of Kognitiv, partnered with various Kognitiv products, including KUBE, a booking engine. Around 2021, Seekda took full control of KUBE's management and development, making it one of their primary products.
Customers/business pain points (hotel owners):
The system looked outdated.
Hotel room lists are often too long for guests to scroll through entirely.
A large percentage of guests drop off after first step
Number of problems with the interface for guests:
The search bar was not intuitive
It is not clear when which rooms are available
Payment process is not obvious
Checkout form has at least 10 fields
Problems that have accumulated over time
2021 — 2023
Updated Booking Engine
for hotels, mainly in the German-speaking region of Europe.
My role: UX/UI designer
Workflow description
About company
Seekda, a division of Kognitiv, partnered with various Kognitiv products, including KUBE, a booking engine. Around 2021, Seekda took full control of KUBE's management and development, making it one of their primary products.
Over time, we have accumulated a number of problems that we have been solving iteratively.
Hotel owners pain points:
The system looked outdated. Hotel room lists are often too long for guests to scroll through entirely. A large percentage of guests drop off after first step
Guest experience problems:
The search bar was not intuitive. It is not clear when which rooms are available. Payment process is not obvious. Checkout form has at least 10 fields.
I chose the JTBD approach because I thought it was well suited to the task of improving the user experience in this project and helped to facilitate collaboration between the teams involved.
Jobs to be done
I'm quite flexible in choosing dates for my trip, so I want to know which days are cheaper to book a room
I need to reserve a room easily and quickly, not fill in dozens of fields in forms.
I'm not satisfied with the search results and wonder what other options there are for choosing rooms
When I plan a trip in advance, I want to see comprehensive hotel offers so that I don't have to choose additional services separately
When I reserve a room, I need to understand how the final price is formed and what additional payments are required.
The dates depend on the hotel's settings — a certain period of time from the user's current date.
First step
Search bar
A user initiates booking by entering key parameters, such as dates and guest count, from the search screen. Fields are pre-filled.
“which days are cheaper”
But, of course, most users change their dates, so we've worked on a new mobile-friendly calendar.
The new calendars now include a significant addition: pricing based on dates.
This innovation that will allow users to evaluate the price range of the visited hotel, which days are suits more and this will help guests to plan stay better.
An indicator has been added to denote hotel restrictions of the minimum length of stay.
According to analytics, more than 90% of guests booked a room for two, but of course there is a possibility to flexibly customize the number of guests and rooms
Offers
Offers or "packages" are specific rooms, often with services, with certain prices and often during a certain period (for example, "5 days in a hotel during the ski season" or "spa for the whole weekend," etc.).
List of rooms
By reorganizing elements into logical groups and improving graphic design, we saved screen space, thereby enhancing the user experience with reduced scrolling.
Alternative dates
The idea of showing alternative dates both for rooms in general and for rates was suggested to improve user awareness of available options at the hotel.
Prior to the update, when a room was not available on the selected date, users were prompted to change the dates to see the available prices for that room.Sometimes it didn't work (if the feature was disabled), and users had to guess when rooms were available.Many clients didn't like this, and even marketing agencies that worked with hotels tried to create their own scripts to replace it.
An idea was proposed to show alternative dates not only for rooms, but also for prices for different dates.If an alternative with the same length of stay as the user's search is not available, the system will automatically reduce the length of stay until a bookable offer is found or offer to shift the dates.This project should solve one of the pain points for business owners and make Seekda stand out on the market (most systems cannot offer this)
Checkout page
Prior to the redesign, guests were asked to fill out a long form, most of which could be obtained at the reception upon check-in or check-out. By using Google scripts to automatically fill in the address, this process became much easier.
Booking summary
The summary card now contains structured information that is presented in a logical manner:
Info about the room with photo (to make sure that it is the room that the guest has chosen);
check-in and -out dates in “human language”room price;
all added services with prices;
total with explenation about taxes.
Payment
We made the payment and taxation process more transparent.Since hotel payments often include taxes or are only partially online, the payment block was redesigned to explain to users how the payment will be made or how much more they will need to pay later.