Charting a Path to Increased Conversion
In recent years, cultural tourism — tourism that seeks to learn, discover, experience and consume the tangible and intangible cultural aspects of a destination — has become a significant driver of tourism overall. According to a 2018 UNWTO report, cultural tourism is estimated to account for 39% of all international tourism.
With this increase in consumption has come increasing awareness of the need for sustainable tourism and a growing appreciation for less well-known tourist destinations and their cultures.
I was part of a project to design a responsive website for Sahtú Adventures, an indigenous cultural and adventure tourism provider based out of Norman Wells, NWT.
Project Scope
Responsive Website Design for Sahtú Adventures
My Role
UX Designer
My Team Members
Cerise McKay — UX Designer
Sakin Egal — UX Designer
Viktorija Gjorgjievska — UX Designer
Kathy Li — UI Designer
Kim McKinnon — UI Designer
Project Timeline
3 weeks (Dec. 2019)
Sahtú Adventures Inc.
Run by James McPherson and his partner Jennie, both locals of the area, Sahtú Adventures offers boating and camping trips from Great Bear Lake up to the Arctic Circle. As the only indigenous tourism operator in the area, James is motivated by his desire to share the traditions and history of his people and the Sahtú region with the world.
“Our history… our museum… is out on the land.”
— James McPherson
The Challenge
With a land area of over 220,000 square kilometres and a population of around 2,600, the Sahtú region is an area with rich culture, traditions, and values.
Sahtú Adventures Inc. wants to bring people closer to the Sahtú region and its indigenous culture but not many travellers are aware of it as a destination.
While the current website has attracted visitors, few of these visits have resulted in trip bookings.
Our opportunity was to develop a responsive website that will inform visitors about the Sahtú region, build trust in Sahtú Adventures, and provide them with information about the activities on offer.
Our Goals
- Build trust in the authenticity of Sahtú Adventures by representing the region’s stories and people
- Develop an online booking flow based on the needs and expectations of users
- Improve the usability of the website through simple navigation
Our Aim
- Increase the number of trip bookings
Surveying the Terrain
Among tourists, there are specific groups who might be especially interested in trip packages offered in Sahtú. Among them are those seeking adventure or exploration, as well as people with an interest in cultural and sustainable tourism. To find these groups, we targeted a mix of general and specific travel and tourist groups on Facebook, LinkedIn and Reddit. Given the broad appeal of the subject, we were also able to get responses from various Slack channels.
Our Results
We deployed two separate surveys, one focused on cultural tourism and the other on online booking with tablets and mobile devices.
Key Insights
When it comes to tours, most travellers will plan all or part of a tour themselves, indicating a preference for customization, while group tours are the most common types of tours in contrast to private tours.
Travellers tend to find tours through travel hubs that combine multiple tour providers and more book online than through other options.
Between tablet and mobile, mobile is a clear winner, with travellers using a combination of mobile and desktop to book their tours. This informed our approach; we prioritized mobile and did not develop a tablet-specific design for the website.
Finding Our Way
Between our two surveys, we had over 750 responses to go through. While most of our questions could be easily quantified, we left a few of them open-ended. We took each of these responses and placed them onto (virtual) sticky notes. When we had placed all of the notes onto a large board, we started forming groups between similar notes, creating an affinity diagram.
We found that curiosity for other cultures was a common motivator, while the authenticity of the tour provider was a large part of its appeal. Travellers were also sensitive to price and social influence; for many, going on a tour was about spending time with friends and family or meeting new people in addition to discovering more about the place being visited.
When it came to online booking we found that travellers highly valued ease-of-use. Common frustrations were the website responsiveness, often due to connectivity issues, and the visibility of relevant information, a problem encountered on the small screens of mobile phones.
From our grouped data points we could start to form a picture of what was common to the largest portions of our potential users. But, working with data points is unwieldy and impractical for making design decisions. To do that, we needed to go from general to specific.
Discovering Our Travellers
We developed three personas based on our research. These are fictional users who represent multiple attributes from across our potential user base. Our primary users are represented by Claire and Maxwell. Claire requires the ability to customize her travel plans and likes to drill into the details, while Maxwell is looking for a no-fuss tour. We also developed a secondary persona, Kara.
Starting from our primary personas, Claire and Maxwell, we mapped out their day as they planned a trip to the Northwest Territories. We detailed their actions, thoughts, and emotions as they came to interact with the current website for Sahtú Adventures and noted any opportunities to improve their experience along the way. This high-level flow of a user’s interaction through a product is called a journey map.
Reflecting on the journey maps for Claire and Maxwell we highlighted opportunities that would address their frustrations and concerns. Among these were focusing on the local and authentic experiences offered by Sahtú Adventures, providing custom tour pricing estimation, and online booking.
Looking Near and Far
As well as surveying users and conducting interviews, we performed a competitive and comparative analysis between the current Sahtú website and other websites that we could consider direct and indirect competitors.
Surfacing the Top Features
From the journey maps and our competitive analysis, we came up with a set of features to include in the website. We then voted on these features as a group using a Feature Prioritization Matrix.
Online Booking Flow
With fully online booking, travellers can complete the process of research, planning and booking all in one sitting, removing a key barrier to booking a trip for many travellers.
Custom Packages
Through custom packages, travellers can build their ideal trip based on the activities and locations provided by Sahtú Adventures. They can get an initial estimate for the cost of their trip, which begins a conversation to develop a detailed itinerary with Sahtú.
Bringing It All to Life
Our UI Designers developed mood boards reflecting the beauty of the Sahtú environment, a sense of adventure, as well as the warm and familiar. A style tile was developed including typography, colour palette, icons, and buttons.
Drawing Up a Map
Once we had the features set out that we were going to incorporate, we began organizing the pages of the website. We developed a site map, describing the top-level navigation for the site as well as the content within each category.
Uncovering the Paths
With our information architecture mapped out, we developed user flows for our two primary personas — Claire and Maxwell. User flows are detailed sets of actions and decisions made by users as they interact with the website. With Claire, we went through the process of setting up a custom adventure, while with Maxwell we looked at booking a packaged tour.
Taking Our First Steps
At this point, we had a high-level site structure as well as detailed steps for key site interactions. It was time to start visualizing our design. We began with low-fidelity sketches: simple hand-drawn wireframes intended to communicate the basic ideas behind a design. We found it useful to start by drawing collaboratively on a whiteboard. This way, our designs were visible to everyone on the team and we could easily discuss and iterate the designs.
Afterward, we sketched our designs individually to work out details that were not easily addressed in a collaborative setting. We included lo-fi sketches for mobile to preview how we might organize the content for the smaller screen and identify early opportunities to simplify the design.
Committing to a Course
With our lo-fi designs sketched out, we moved on to developing our mid-fidelity designs in Figma.
Testing Our Decisions
Before testing our prototype, we defined our core testing objectives:
- Users understand the business offering and trust the authenticity of services provided
- Users can find and book packages with ease
- Users can understand and use the custom packages
- Users can book services and rentals
Overall, users found the website simple to understand and navigate. However, our testing uncovered several issues that either confused users or hindered their ability to book the package that they wanted.
Services and Rentals Date and Time Selection
Add-Ons Within the Booking Flow
Payment Form
Final Design
Viewing a Package
Travellers are given information about the duration of the trip, the activities included and the locations visited. Some of the other features on this page include:
- Detailed itinerary
- Map view of the areas visited
- List of things included in the package
- List of things to bring for the trip
- Highlight on other trips that might be of interest
Custom Adventures
With custom adventures, travellers are starting a dialogue with Sahtú Adventures to build their trip. A sticky navigation menu gives travellers a preview of the estimated total for their trip, and, when it is expanded, they can remove items that they may have added to the trip.
Services and Rentals
Travellers can rent equipment or reserve a boat charter from Sahtú Adventures outside of any trip. On the Services and Rentals page, travellers can select the items that they are interested in booking. As they proceed to book these items, they can select the dates and times for them.
Booking an Adventure
The booking process is kept to a two-stage flow to make the experience as frictionless as possible for travellers. After selecting a package, travellers need to select the date when they would like to start their trip. From there they move on to the payment section where they are asked for their contact and payment information.
Responsive Design
From our research, booking on mobile was characterized by two key recurring complaints: lack of features present on the desktop version and difficulty of use due to screen size limitations. Our challenge was to incorporate the functionality of the desktop site while keeping the mobile design simple, intuitive, and uncluttered.
The pages generally take on a stacked format, with horizontal scrolling used to view lists of options such as packages or services and rentals. The sticky navigation for price moves to the bottom of the screen where there is more real estate. When selecting a date in the booking flow, the calendar occupies the entirety of the screen.
On mobile, users have all of the functionality of the desktop site in a design that is considered for that use case.
Future Opportunities
As is often the case in a short design sprint, we weren’t able to pursue every opportunity for the design. Looking ahead, we identified a few areas for Sahtú Adventures to better address the needs of its potential customers and expand its reach.
Focus on the local community
Using a blog or similar format on the website, dedicating more space to the indigenous community of Sahtú would provide a preview to travellers of what they could expect while also addressing the concerns about the authenticity of the tours
Work with third-party tour providers
Once Sahtú Adventures has developed a core offering of packages that are popular with travellers, providing booking options through third-party tour providers would be a good extension. Most travellers booked their tours through larger “hub” tour provider websites, so this way Sahtú could meet travellers where they are. The website would still be highly valuable by offering services not available through those providers (custom adventures and rentals) and through its ability to better inform travellers about the region and culture.
Connecting Travellers to Adventure
Our challenge in this sprint was improving the conversion rate of site visitors to tour bookings.
We designed a simple yet feature-rich website that would cater to the needs of different types of travellers, provide information about trips, and offer the ability for seamless, fully online booking. We designed for desktop and mobile, based on the preferences of surveyed travellers and delivered an MVP that Sahtú can build upon as they grow their business.
By providing packaged tours, custom adventures, and services and rentals, the website reflects the unique offerings of Sahtú Adventures. Travellers can book trips in a way that is best suited to their preferences.
