Project overview
HF Holidays already had a new website in the works, but brought us in to take a proper look at the key user journeys before launch, particularly search, filtering and booking.
The brief was to look closely at the parts of the site most likely to affect whether users could successfully find and book the right holiday, and make sure the UX was in tip-top condition.
HF Holidays has a broad product range, a large repeat customer base and many different booking scenarios. This project also involved several internal and external teams, so any UX recommendations had to work not only for customers, but also for the technical constraints of the website.
- Client
- HF Holidays
- Topics
- In short
- Overhauled a complex holiday booking experience, combining our strong UX expertise with serious technical know-how.
The objectives
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Goal 1
The main objective was simple: give HF Holidays confidence that the key user journeys on the new website were working properly. This meant simplifying the route from browsing through to booking, and improving the overall experience of searching for and comparing holidays.
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Goal 2
There were also some wider business goals that needed to be considered, including improving conversion (and reducing drop offs), brochure requests and newsletter sign-ups.
The challenges
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A broad range, with lots of variables
HF’s holidays range from UK Country House stays to European and worldwide trips. There are also a lot of different variables for search and booking, including dates, flights, room availability, membership pricing and holiday types. Some customers could be looking for a particular destination, while others might care more about dates, grade of walks, or even single-room availability.
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A complex technical setup
The technical setup also added a layer of complexity. Search behaviour, categories and availability data all needed to work together properly. So we worked a bit like a hub, helping translate UX problems into practical technical solutions.
Discovery
As always, we kicked things off with the discovery phase.
We looked at the site from several angles: the main user journeys, HF Holidays’ product range and customer base, business priorities, mobile behaviour and the technical setup behind search and booking. That gave us a clear view of where the biggest UX issues were and which ones needed to be dealt with first.
This work highlighted several key priority areas, including:
- Holiday search
- Search filters
- Search results
- Holiday detail pages
- Dates and pricing
- Mobile usability
- Clearer presentation of holiday types and availability
- Membership pricing and messaging
What the customers told us
As part of the process, HF Holidays created a survey for existing customers to understand how they really search for holidays. What matters most to them when making a decision, and where the online journey was causing problems. These findings were super useful.
Searching for dates was important to most respondents, however, many wanted flexibility, and HF’s customers were also practical in the way they chose holidays. Transport access, ease of travel from home and the location of individual Country Houses were also big considerations.
The survey also showed that people were more likely to pick up the phone when they couldn’t find enough information online or were dealing with a more complicated booking.
The process
Once discovery was complete, we started with the areas most likely to affect booking, and search was one of the biggest.
The existing search didn’t match either the range of holidays HF offers or the way customers wanted to use it. We looked at destinations, dates, airports and availability, and how people could search more broadly when they didn’t have a fixed option in mind.
From there, the filters needed work too. Customers had to be able to see what they’d selected, change their minds easily and move between different combinations without the whole search becoming confusing.
We also looked at how the results were presented, including pricing, membership discounts and offers (and what happened when there were no suitable holidays to show). Plus, how the different types of HF holiday were presented, so people could really understand the range.
The next step was to look further down the journey. On the holiday pages themselves, the focus was on the things people needed to make a decision: clear booking options, prices, membership benefits, dates, itineraries and travel choices.
We paid particular attention to mobile as well, especially how search, filters and booking controls behaved on smaller screens.
Finally, we tested the key journeys, checking that changes held up in practice and picking up issues that weren’t always obvious in the designs themselves.
Joining the dots
A big part of our role was joining things up. Not every UX issue was really a design issue; some came down to data, search configuration, categorisation or the way the platform had been built.
That meant working closely with HF Holidays and its development partners to understand what was actually causing a problem before deciding how to fix it. As a development agency, our technical know-how was particularly useful here.
The result
50+
UX improvements identified across search, booking and beyond
The new HF Holidays website launched successfully, with the key search and discovery journeys significantly improved and the changes backed up with testing and analysis. And most importantly, despite the scale of the changes, the new site launched without an initial drop in booking volume.
For a project involving a completely new site, complex search functionality, several booking scenarios and multiple teams, that was an important measure of success.
The project also left HF Holidays with a clearer picture of what their customers wanted from a website and where any future UX work should be focused.
