Interfaces of the tour aggregator: what we did and where we need Habr's help

    We aggregate tours in one search to find the cheapest. Our main problem is that we know the specifics of the tours too well, and we already have professional deformation. We grew up on the search interfaces of tour operators, and then, in fact, we made a metasystem for searching. But this is a professional interface superimposed on user experience. Which requires a completely different.

    I will now show you what was successful and what was really bad, that is, where I would not refuse your help. For any useful advice (even which we will not be able to implement for one reason or another) - we will have a discount on the tour in the form of a promotional code for 1000 rubles without an expiration date. And then the story, why not, if not implemented.


    To choose a place, it was important for the traveler to know the past name of the hotel (they often change their names when changing ownership to get rid of the tail of old reviews), type of beach (sandy or pebble), average monthly weather, and so on.

    the main problem


    Now we have a group of independent travelers who wouldn’t have taken a tour in their life if it hadn’t been cheaper in the package (flights, hotel, insurance, transfer) than air tickets for self-purchase. That is, these are those people who know how to save.

    So, these people, if they don’t know this chip in advance and on purpose, then run away, because the tours they associate are not with free travel at all, but with a buffet, a bus for Russian tourists peeling off from sunburn and fumes, and a moron guide. This, of course, is not always the case, but the stereotype has settled. We are now moving aside, as they understand more clearly, what and how it works.

    Three tour search scenarios


    Let's start with the main element - this is the tour search string. Everything seems to be clear here. Where, how much, immediately a small fork on the date of departure and the duration of the trip, how many people.



    Here we brought out two useful and at the same time unloading server things:

    1. Travelers made many consistent searches, that is, often the departure date was not as important as the price of the tour. Therefore, we immediately added a default plug. This turned out to be good both for conversion (people immediately see cheaper options and are more likely to buy), and for the server (such blocks are easier to request and cache in the end).

    2. A person does not buy a tour the first time. As a rule, these are two visits: “intelligence”, that is, a general inspection of what and how at prices, then return. So, we fill in the search bar according to past parameters from cookies. This helps to immediately catch the desired tour - the one that last time. Yes, the price may change, but there will most likely be no long feverish searches for the remembered option.

    Under the strip, we immediately made a summary of the minimum prices. We take them from the cache for a day, so they are not always in fact the minimum (prices are updated every 15 minutes, and the tours are taken apart), but faster updates are very expensive, alas.

    Everything seems to be fine here in general, the only thing - perhaps we’ll make the choice not to “have a plug for 3 days — no plug”, but also 5 days. Alas, this will dramatically increase the load on the requests of tour operators, and, I remind you, clever work with cache and requests is the main feature of the engine. With our avalanche of requests, we know how to perfectly put the server of operators.

    Search by price


    Not all travelers are looking in the direction, as our main form suggests. Sometimes the question is posed like this: there is a certain budget, it is necessary to keep within it. We have been solving this issue for a long time. Based on the same cache analysis, we also made the calendar of the lowest prices:



    Now, looking at it, I already understand that somehow we put it on the website in the wrong way: it’s in the top menu in “ More - Calendar ”. Counterintuitively, while we think what to do next with it. For a long time we have been doing newsletters with the cheapest tours for those who are watching the price (you can subscribe to the main or a specific destination), and also the general Telegram channel with the sweetest. With the channel, I’m worried that it’s not going right now - not the biggest discounts are needed, but tours within a limited budget, maybe.

    The page is very long, so there is a country navigator at the top. I begin to suspect that we still need to make a border for the price.

    The third scenario for finding a tour is when a person wants to tell everything in words, as in a tour operator’s office. Such buyers may be 10-15% depending on the season. To do this, we have a 24-hour contact center for 90–150 operators and a callback button (“Pick me a tour”). The button significantly added transitions, by the way. Just a long-distance call still scares people away, and a “call back” does not work like a direct indication of why you need it. As a result, there were two buttons at all: the callback order and the tour selection wizard, which ends with either a call or a visit to a partner’s office in the real world.

    An important insight was this:



    There is a third paradigm. People often don’t know either the direction or the budget, but really want to touch the turtle or go skiing. We help.

    searching results


    The download is long - for example, in Thailand with a plug 3 days about 2,000 requests for tours are made. During the download, we have the opportunity to immediately show prices from the cache and at the start we describe the main advantages, so that people understand that this is not just a search, but also a guarantee.

    The calendar appears around the third or fifth second of the search, because in the case of a cooled cache it is a huge DBMS join:



    We begin to show options when the search does not end yet, about 40% of the data received.



    This is where the problems begin. The fact is that the generally accepted standard of the sphere is the grouping by hotels. That is, when you want to relax somewhere in another country, we show you hotels where you can stay. Many in this place think that this is something like a search for accommodation, not a tour, and leave. About two months ago, we rolled up such a die to make it clearer:



    And we also made these small inscriptions on the very tour like “price for 2 adults, flights included.” Another important point: many show the price for one, for us - for two.

    This page is perhaps the most difficult for our customers to understand, but honestly, my eyes are already so blurred that I don’t know what else can be done. If you look and write how you looked for the tour, it will help a lot.

    There are many misunderstandings with filters. As our statistics show, a rare bird reaches the third filter when choosing a hotel. The most important filter for popular destinations, such as the distance to the beach. And we have about a hundred signs by which you can classify a hotel. What else is a factor of choice for you and in what situations?

    Tour Page


    Here is the tour page. More precisely, a hotel, because there are usually dozens of tours tied to it (this one has three, it can be seen in the middle block). Upstairs we have a hotel. We already guess that you need to write something about the tour itself, and not just about the place of residence. We do not yet understand what would be most convenient.



    Under the block with tours - all the features and amenities of the hotel like having free Wi-Fi. This is important for tourists, but sometimes this thing depends on the class of the room, especially if the hotel has several buildings. We don’t know the type of number yet, so we show everything from the database. Another point - it’s very interesting to understand how you use the hotel’s location map on a trip to an unfamiliar city and what you are looking for and looking at it.

    Further reviews of “TopHotels” (this is the most relevant service without feedback markups, we tighten them) and ours from trusted travelers. Tell me, do you understand that there are tabs, or does it look like banners?

    Here we have nothing about the tour itself, therefore, in fact, you still have to choose it from the options tied to this hotel. But something needs to be shown, obviously. If you tell me what exactly you can tell the site reader at this stage, it will be very cool.

    This is what the tour card looks like if we go further:



    Here, on the advice of the usabelist, we turned off all the "background noise" - navigation and even clicks on the logo. This raised the conversion, but I'm not sure if this is completely correct (in case of going back a step).

    Reviews


    Feedback is very important. They make it clear that all this really works. Let me remind you: one of the main objections of the first years was that a travel agent in the office could be beaten if something happened, but the operator wouldn’t.

    Reviews go without filtering (for example, a deuce on the main one):



    As it turned out, this does not interfere. People are well aware that when 10 are positive and one is bad, this is completely normal. On the other hand, when 50 are positive and not a single bad one, the legitimate question arises as to whether or not these reviews are singed.

    There are many more cases: traveling with a baby (there is an option in the search), starting not from Moscow (the starting city is selected by default from the user's GeoIP), a calendar at the top of the search, and so on.

    In general, I would be very grateful if you would walk around the site a bit and say that it seems counterintuitive to you.

    Thanks in advance.

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