Philippine Airlines Website
Increasing PAL's online revenue by improving content discovery and accessibility
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Problem
Improve the website so PAL increases online revenue by 20%
Impact
15% more mobile sessions, 12% more new users, 28% more visits to other pages, 100% more traffic from home page to booking flow
Role
Sole designer, conducted benchmark studies, sitemap evaluations, information re-architecture, interface design, and prototyping
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Philippine Airlines is the flag carrier of the Philippines. It flies approximately 15 million passengers per year.
In 2018, PAL wanted to increase their online revenue by 20%. Their digital marketing team decided that improving the website can help achieve this.
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"How can we improve the website so PAL increases online revenue by 20%?
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I joined the project when the research was already completed. The project team needed support to complete the interaction and visual designs. I joined as the second designer but eventually took over as the lead designer.
Philippine Airlines' homepage before the redesign
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Issues
The heuristic evaluation identified several issues, most of which were related to website navigation and accessibility. These issues affected how customers discovered content.
We also analyzed and benchmarked PAL's sitemap against those of other airlines. By analyzing the sitemap, we learned that:
Key revenue-generating content—like baggage information or seat upgrade information—were buried deep within the site.
Content wasn't always found where customers expect to find it.
Some pages were repeated redundantly through out the website. This was information overload for the website's users.
Philippine Airlines' sitemap before the redesign
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Design Solutions
Restructure the information architecture
In reconstructing PAL’s information architecture, we minimized redundancies—like About Us information—in both main and footer navigations.
We finalized a sitemap that focused in providing logical and intuitive paths to accomplishing user tasks.
In some cases, finding information still takes a user deeper into the site but, now, the website is structured to make it easier to locate information from the home page.
New PAL sitemap. Key actions and information are easier to find.
Make important travel information more discoverable
The new main navigation focuses on providing everything that a customer might need in a more intuitive location. Travel Information is also organized in a way that makes sense to customers. The new design provides quick access to previously underexposed self-service content.
The new website's top navigation contains virtually all information that a customer may need during their customer journey with Philippine Airlines
Place primary actions in an accessible location
Four key customer jobs-to-be-done when the user visits the website are:
Booking a flight
Checking in
Managing a booking
Checking flight status
These four key customer jobs-to-be-done are now accessible from a single location which is always visible above the fold.
In the new website design, the four key Jobs-to-be-Done (Book Flight, Check In, Manage Booking, and Flight Status) are accessible from a form that is always above the fold
Increase contrast of flight deals vs other promos
We split the current design’s all-the-promos-are-here section into two distinct sections, Flight Promotions and Travel Extras. Grouping information in this manner makes it easier for customers to identify and understand it.
Flight Promotions offers an easy way to discover cheap trips.
Travel Extras include promotions for travel insurance and lounges. These provide added revenue for the airlines.
Improve visibility of revenue-generating airline products
The new design puts an emphasis on purchasing extra baggage allowance, getting seat upgrades, and buying travel insurances.
At the time, these three comprised about 20% of PAL's current online revenue.
By placing these options in an area that is consistently above the fold in most devices, we hope to increase its accessibility to customers who need it.
Philippine Airlines' homepage before the redesign
Design for mobile-first
During the study, we learned that a huge percentage of customers viewed the website using their mobile phones.
The new design makes sure that the website is accessible—and beautiful —from a mobile view.
Key actions (booking a flight, checking in, etc) are within reach of the customers thumbs and provide a quick way to complete key tasks. And below these key actions are the revenue-generating content like baggage allowance, seat upgrades, and travel insurance.
Lastly, the navigation sticks to the top to provide quick access to more travel information.
Self-service options are now the first thing customers see when they visit Help Center
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Key Learnings
Comparing 3 months before and after the redesign (n=2.9M):
Increase in monthly sessions (+15% mobile, +1% desktop, +4% tablet)
Increase in new users (+12% mobile, +5% desktop, +5% tablet)
Decrease in monthly avg. bounce rate (-2% mobile, -4% desktop)
Increase in monthly avg. pages visited per session (+8% mobile, +8% desktop)
Increase in monthly avg. session duration (+6% mobile, +6% desktop)
Decrease in monthly avg. home page dropoff (-13%)
Increase in monthly avg. traffic from landing page to booking flow (+100%, from average of 4.3K to 9.3K)
Increase in monthly avg. visits to other pages (+28%, from 462K to 595K)
And, according to Sitecore:
122% increase in organic search conversions
80% increase in web users
205% increase in direct search conversions
93% increase in web sessions
110% increase in social traffic conversions