“Vamos para São Paulo!” says the tester, and calls up the swiss.com homepage. As she sits at her screen in SWISS’s in-house mini-lab and proceeds to book her flight, every one of her clicks – plus every tiny hesitation – is carefully monitored by the specialists of the company’s UX Design & Analytics team. “We’ve just redesigned our swiss.com homepage,” explains Head of UX Design & Analytics Stéphanie Joly. “Our main emphases in doing so were on personalising the content more, making the design more emotionally appealing and providing more space for our products and services. Now, of course, we want to know what kind of experience our customers have with it all when they come to plan their travel and book their flight, whether we need to make further enhancements, and if so, where.”
The SWISS UX Design & Analytics team consists of 13 specialists in online communications, analytics and conversion optimisation and usability and user experience (the “UX” of the team’s name). Also on board is the editor of the swiss.com website’s Travel Guide. The team is responsible for ensuring that all swiss.com visitors enjoy a positive website experience. With this aim in mind, the team’s specialists not only develop the website’s concept, design and content: They also make sure that anyone seeking to plan and book their next air travel online can do so as simply and smoothly as possible. “One of our subteams is dedicated to ensuring maximum user-friendliness, with a special emphasis on optimum design,” explains online communications expert Leo Dietrich. “And we use a wide range of data and behaviour analyses and usability testing methods here, including our ‘mini-lab’, all to this end.”
A further subteam devises all the content for the swiss.com site, which is then translated into nine languages. “And we also have an editor looking after our online Travel Guide, which offers a wide range of travel tips,” Leo continues. “Some of these tips are even provided by our own employees, who tend to travel a lot all over the world.” – “A close collaboration among all the units involved is crucial to the success of any of our projects,” stresses Stéphanie Joly. “And revamping our swiss.com homepage was no exception.” It seems to have worked: SWISS’s partner offers, for instance – for rental cars, hotels, the travel packages of SWISS Holidays and more – are now all far easier to find.
website in order to offer their customers the simplest possible booking.
The new-look swiss.com site also features, as its latest innovation, a map of the SWISS route network showing the current positions of every aircraft in the fleet. “We gave our new homepage a ‘silent launch’, opening it up in stages over the last few weeks,” Stéphanie continues. “That way, we could minimise our risks and work in parallel to make any further enhancements that were needed.” With its modular structure, its more personal and emotional appeal, its simplified flight search function, its regional elements and its greatly expanded range of products and services, the new swiss.com offers a truly attractive user experience. This is borne out by its tester’s feedback, too. “I was able to book my flight to São Paulo and find myself a really nice city hotel very quickly and easily,” she confirms. “And I was also grateful for the online tip from Eva, a SWISS Cabin Crew Member who told me I should be sure to watch the sunset from Praça Pôr do Sol.”
Information
SWISS UX Design & Analytics
– swiss.com is Switzerland’s biggest online shop in sales terms
– Total pages on swiss.com: 11,350
– Most popular end device used: iPhone
– Average length of visitors’ swiss.com sessions: 7 minutes 44 seconds
– Flights booked on swiss.com via a gaming console in 2017: five – all on PlayStation 4
– SWISS Travel Guide: Over 3,700 tips for 102 SWISS destinations swiss.com/explore/en
Text: Tamás Kiss / Photos: Claudia Link
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