Tombarra 4B
Website Design
_edited.jpg)
Project Overview
Imagine owning a beautiful, cosy holiday home nestled in the Snowy Mountains of NSW Australia.
Well, my lucky clients do, although they have one problem.
Located in a highly competitive Thredbo Village, Tombarra 4B has struggled to attract visitors and holiday-makers to its doors. In working closely with the clients I have created a live promotional website designed to engage and encourage holiday-makers to choose Tombarra 4B as their home away from home nestled in the mountains. Taking one month to complete, I was the sole UX designer on this project.
.png)
The Problem
The clients of Tombarra 4B are one of many owners facing the uphill battle to stand out from the rest in a highly competitive real estate holiday location - Thredbo Village in the Snowy Mountains of NSW, Australia.
Managed through a real estate company, Tombarra 4B is advertised alongside 40+ other properties located within the same village and is suffering the consequences of low booking and occupancy rates in a way that is leaving the clients out of pocket.
.png)
The Goals
User: Research and book a holiday apartment in Thredbo entirely online with ease and simplicity.
Owners: Increase booking and occupancy rate of Tombarra 4B.
Product: Create an interface that is clean, simple and easy to navigate.
.png)
Step one: Discover
Understanding the target audience
WHO
Let's paint a picture.
Only a six-hour drive south of Sydney - Australia’s most populated city - lies Australia’s ranked no.1 ski resort which is open all year-round with snow sports in the winter and mountain biking in the summer.
At the foothills of the resort lies a small village of approx 4000 beds housing guests in a variety of properties from small wooden cabins to large multistory luxury apartments.
With limited properties and high demand, the rate per night is high, Thredbo village attracts a target audience of couples and families with higher socio-economic backgrounds usually making their way to Thredbo from Sydney and neighbouring capital city Canberra.
Tombarra 4B’s target audience is mainly families and groups of friends who are looking for mid-range accommodation with an appreciation of comfort and coziness over luxury high end style.
Understanding the market
WHAT
The target audience provides information as to who we would like to target, however, understanding the market allows me to delve into understanding what this target audience expects and wants from their experience booking a holiday.
The following statistics present what actions customers are taking to book a holiday and what they are looking for.
148.3 Million
travel bookings are made online by people every year
83%
of adults prefer to book their travel online
82%
of travel bookings are made online, without human interaction
90%
of people do their holiday research online
72%
of people won't book until reading other traveller reviews
Understanding the current context
QUALITATIVE DATA
Although Tombarra 4B is owned by the clients, it is run through a real estate company who manages and promotes the property. In order to fully understand the factors contributing to the main problem of low occupancy rates, I decided to ask 5 users to explore the site and then locate Tombarra 4B, completing the user journey all the way until the booking process.
It must be noted that the Real Estate website hosting Tombarra 4B must remain the only site where users can complete the booking process for Tombarra 4B.
Step two: Define
Understanding the data
ANALYSE
In order to analyse we must converge the data gathered in the discovery phase and define the user and business goals and specify user needs.
It is the intersection of these goals and needs that provide a crucial insight into the most important features and content needed for the solution. The distinction between goals and needs is defined by the following:
​
-
Goals are easily definable states your users want to achieve.
-
Needs are everything they need to achieve that state.
Defining the problem
WHAT NOW?
My clients are looking to increase their yearly booking and occupancy rates of their holiday home.
At this stage, we know who their target audience is, what the market is looking for, what users are looking for and the current pain points felt by their customers.
The problem can now be defined through shaping a solution.
​
We know that in order to be successful that the business needs to cater to these identified needs and create a space and interface that will allow all of these needs to be met and come to life.
This problem will be solved by creating a website with the purpose of meeting all the needs of both the user and the business with a special interest on the needs that overlap and intersect - we will call them MUST-HAVES.
The must have's
HOW MIGHT WE?
Now we know what we are going to create it is all about knowing what content and features will be presented and how.
To start we will take the MUST-HAVES and use the simple activity of applying "How Might We" questions to these goals.
Feature and content ideation
A SYNTHESIS
Through asking how might we questions, ideas about how to present and integrate specific features and content come to light.
The above table has synthesised the identified user and business needs into practical and workable features and content ideas for the website design and architecture.
​
In order to get an early glance ‘from the tree tops’ I created a preliminary site map that carefully considers the feature and content ideation from the above table.
​
At this stage, it was important to work with the clients in order to get a full representation of their expectations for the website. This consultation led to the implementation and inclusion of a page that would include information about Thredbo - See & Do.
Step three: Develop
Exploring
Opportunities
STARTING TO IDEATE
Taking from all of the above research, analysis, synthesis and creation very low fidelity sketches were created to start mapping out the layout and design of the website.
Once deciding on a layout direction and theme that focused on simplicity and usability Lo-Fi wireframes were created. These designs were underpinned by both the content and feature ideation as well as the draft sitemap already created.
STYLE GUIDE & UI KIT
The colours used throughout the next design iteration were inspired by the photo that was chosen to hero the homepage which is an image that shows Tombarra 4B and the view that it has of the resort.
colour palate
buttons
buttons
typography
forms
Bringing it together
TEST | ITERATE | DESIGN
The clients wanted this website to be hosted and designed on WIX - an online website builder that they were already familiar with. In this case, I found it was more beneficial to start the design process straight away before creating prototypes, due to the different design limitations that arise with using a website builder.
​
Each iteration made on WIX was tested by the clients and a few other participants to assist in the design process. On top of this feedback, there were also iterations made that were dependent on the limitations of the WIX software, which was not always compatible with the preferred design. Here, it was important to prioritise usability and simplicity over the perfect or 'desired' design.
Colour
Users found that the original colour choices were a little too confronting and did not couple well. In keeping with the theme, I chose to darken the shade of the reddish colour to create greater contrast and a more sophisticated look overall.
The clients wanted this website to be hosted and designed on WIX - an online website builder that they were already familiar with. In this case, I found it was more beneficial to start the design process straight away before creating prototypes, due to the different design limitations that arise with using a website builder.
​
​
Colour
Users found that the original colour choices were a little "too confronting" and did not couple well. In keeping with the theme, I chose to darken the shade of the reddish colour to create greater contrast and a more sophisticated look overall.
Website builder limitations
The original design and wireframes allowed for photo content to be featured through the placement of a large image against the left or right margin on the home page next to its featured content. Due to the limitations of Wix in terms of its ability to create responsive design, this design aspect was changed throughout the homepage creating more hierarchical style content. To ensure the separation of the content categories was clear and simple for users, strips of colour were used behind the subheadings.
Spacing, layout, reviews, photo content
Users and clients expressed concern about engagement finding there to be "too much text altogether" without a clear separation of content. Keeping in mind the foundational 'must-haves' of this design solution, a new iteration was designed which incorporates customer reviews seamlessly into the content while also engaging the customer with photo content. This, in turn, should help the users picture themselves in the apartment, building a sense of intrigue and trust.
Step four: Deliver
.png)
Final Stages
DESIGN COMPLETION
After various rounds of testing and consultation with the clients and participants, the final design was ready to go live. It was time to test in the wild and see if this design solution was going to help solve the problem originally faced by the clients.
Has it made an impact?
RESULTS
These initial results have been taken from the inbuilt analytics from WIX and they show that the website has definitely had a great impact on the booking and occupancy rates of Tombarra 4B. On top of the increase in bookings, the data on the site itself shows:
-
There are return customers indicating engagement and interest with 32 unique visitors converting to 60 site sessions.
-
The user is spending an average of 7 minutes on the website also indicating that the content is engaging as well as informative to the user.
-
We are also able to see that the user's actions mimic the research with visits to the Accommodation and gallery page showing placing great importance on true and correct accommodation information, descriptions as well as photo content.
23% Increase
in bookings made for the coming year 2022
60
site sessions in the past 30 days
7m 3s
time spent on the website
32
unique visitors to the site
Most visited pages
-
Homepage
-
Accommodation
-
Gallery
-
See & Do
-
FAQ
Next Steps
KEEP TESTING
The results shown above surpassed expectations for the first month of the website being live and the clients were really pleased. Despite this, there is always room for improvement. The next steps in testing will revolve around understanding how the user is currently using the site. I would like to embed Google Analytics as a testing tool and take advantage of their new Heat Map feature. I hope that analysing the data gained will allow for a more streamlined design which is more focused on the user.
What have I learned?
TAKEAWAYS
This project was by far the most important UX project I have completed and it was the first to go live and be used by real users. The gravity of this allowed me to learn and grow beyond previous projects. For me, reflection is the gateway to learning and improvement. My key learnings include both personal and practical takeaways:
​
-
Self-doubt is normal - although frustrating, self-doubt is a normal part of any design process. Throughout this project, I found myself really doubting my process and skills at certain points. This really impacted my ability to create and left me with a lack of confidence when meeting with my clients. I tried to overcome this by allowing myself the freedom to explore and create ‘drafts’ that I could iterate upon. This allowed me to not feel as though everything needed to be ‘perfect’ the first time and I could come back to it and make improvements over time. I think this will be something that I will have to continue to learn and manage in the future.
​
-
Keep it relevant - It is so easy to get swept up in the design process of a project that it is easy to forget the original goal and needs of the design solution. I found myself looking at design inspiration feeling overwhelmed by the number of possibilities as well as the calibre of the work. Here, it was important for me to take a step back and remember the original goals and really double down on the feature ideation in order to focus on smaller parts of the design.
​
-
Keep it simple for the users - Again I found it really easy to overcomplicate the design so it was really important to keep the word ‘simplicity’ at the forefront. I found it really helpful to always critique my design based on a few key design principles. These include:
-
Jakob's law - users prefer your site to work the same way as all other sites
-
Hierarchy of Information - ordering content to indicate importance
-
Consistency
-
​
​