Travel Agent Central Redesign

The site had an outdated look which did not appeal to the increasing number of millennial agents. It was my goal to redesign the site to give our audience a better desktop and mobile experience.

In addition, our travel team was looking for new, unique ways to bring in clients and advertise on the site. The first steps began with analyzing Hotjar tests, Google Analytics, and Parsley data to determine information about our users. I discovered that there’s an almost even split between our desktop and mobile users. Our previous design was not mobile friendly, so this newly designed site had to have a better mobile experience. As seen below, the outdated design is to the left and the new design is to the right.

With 20+ destinations to choose from, it was important for our users to find their desired destination with ease as well as let our travel team influence our users towards a specific destination.

I created a new feature located at the bottom of the homepage called “Featured Destinations” which allows the editors to pick and choose destinations that they want to highlight. Ideally, editors would choose to highlight destinations with a new related focus series course added to the sidebar of that particular section front. Focus series are courses that are part of our e-learning program. In the old design, the focus series courses were hidden in the top navigation and didn’t get much attraction. By adding a focus series block to our sidebar, users can easily access the course related to the content they are currently viewing. For example, if a new Hawaii Focus Series course was released, the editors would chose to highlight that course in the backend, and it would appear on the “Hawaii” section front page. The editors can then choose to make Hawaii one of the featured destinations on the homepage.

Enhancing our mobile experience was key to a successful redesign. I started the process by rethinking our navigation.

With not many users taking advantage of the hamburger menu, I created a visible sub-navigation for users to scroll through. Studies show that mobile users are more likely to utilize a navigation that is clearly visible than hidden within a hamburger menu.

Our users did not spend too much time reading our articles. This was partially due the articles’ small font size and line height. I increased both of those which would then increase the amount of time the user spent scrolling and reading. On mobile, it is important to keep the user scrolling or to keep them engaged by sending them to another page on the site.

Not only were there changes and new additions made for our direct audience but also for our sponsors and advertisers. The “From our Partners” section was created for our travel team to sell sponsored articles on our site. This block gives the sponsored content higher view-ability because they are not integrated within the rest of our in-house content.