The Product

Flight Centre is a global travel and tourism retailer, offering holiday products to travellers worldwide. The business aimed to enhance the online cruise booking experience, making it simpler and more intuitive for customers to book cruises directly online.

We developed a cruise booking website that allowed customers to search itineraries, explore detailed cruise information, select cabins and preferences, and complete bookings seamlessly.

A critical aspect of the platform was helping customers choose the right cabin. Since cruise guests spend significant time onboard, selecting a suitable cabin is a key part of the experience. While in-store consultants traditionally support customers in this decision, the website was designed to provide similar guidance digitally, ensuring users could make informed choices with confidence.

Problem

After launching the booking website, we implemented FullStory to monitor and track user interactions, helping the product design team identify and address friction points in the digital experience.

Analysis of the FullStory funnels revealed a significant drop-off (~70%) on the Cabin Selection page. Reviewing session recordings suggested that the current UI and selection process was confusing potential customers, leading many to abandon their bookings.

The objective of this initiative was to reduce drop-offs and increase the number of customers successfully selecting a cabin and moving to the next step in the booking flow.

The existing Cabin Selection process required customers to:

1. Select a Cabin Category (e.g., Inside, Outside, Balcony, Suite), similar to choosing Economy, Business, or First Class on a flight.

2. Select a Cabin Grade (e.g., Inside 2A, Inside 2B, Inside 2C), which categorises cabins by location on the ship or specific features.

3. Select a specific Cabin Number matching the chosen Category and Grade.

After analysis, it became clear that roughly 50% of users were dropping off at each step, indicating that the process was difficult to navigate. To improve the overall conversion rate of the cruise booking website, it was essential to remove these obstacles and streamline the cabin selection journey.

UX Research

FullStory was a key tool for gathering insights into user behavior. I used the platform to create detailed funnels that tracked customer journeys and interactions, allowing me to identify potential pain points. These findings were then clearly visualized and communicated to the product team to inform design decisions.

Competitor analysis was an important step in exploring alternative design patterns and understanding how other companies addressed similar challenges. I reviewed 10 different Cruise Line websites, examining the booking journey steps as well as UI layouts across both desktop and mobile.

A clear trend emerged: Cruise Lines had largely moved away from using cabin codes in their online booking flows. Instead, they guided customers to choose a deck number and a location on the ship (Aft, Mid-Ship, or Forward). This approach presented users with a more intuitive and connected sequence of choices, ultimately leading to cabin selection in a way that felt more logical and customer-friendly.

Interestingly, a review of Cruise Aggregator websites showed the opposite pattern. These platforms continued to rely heavily on cabin codes, mirroring the structure of our existing system. This contrast highlighted an opportunity for us to move toward the more user-centered patterns already being adopted by major Cruise Lines.

Design Links

Figma link for designs

We used UMUX to directly test the website and validate our design hypothesis, ensuring that we correctly understood user problems and could observe real interactions with the platform.

During testing, participants struggled to interpret cabin codes and had difficulty deciding which cabin to select. They were unable to distinguish between different options, which prevented them from moving forward in the booking process.

The findings provided valuable anecdotal evidence, which we shared with the product team. This helped clearly communicate the challenges users faced and informed the development of targeted recommendations to improve the cabin selection experience.

A strong understanding of technical capabilities is essential for designing practical and effective solutions. Knowing what a product can and cannot do ensures that design recommendations remain feasible within the constraints of available technology. These constraints may stem from limited data endpoints, infrastructure capabilities, or restrictions within existing APIs. By working closely with engineers, I was able to align design ideas with the realities of the system architecture.

To assess feasibility, I collaborated with an engineer familiar with the APIs powering the cruise booking platform. Together, we analysed sample cruise data and confirmed which endpoints were accessible for use in the customer experience. This investigation revealed that data for Deck Number and Ship Location was available, and with some additional logic, it could be leveraged to filter cabins—removing the need to expose customers to confusing Cabin Codes.

Although the system had originally been configured to filter cabins by codes, the discussions confirmed that with some engineering adjustments, we could reframe the process around Deck and Location. This provided confidence that the proposed design was not only more user-friendly but also technically achievable.

The UX Research allowed me to deeply understand the core challenges users were facing, while the Competitor Research broadened my perspective by highlighting alternative patterns and solutions used across the industry. Finally, the Technical Investigation ensured that any proposed design was grounded in the realities of the platform, aligning with both system capabilities and budget constraints. Together, these activities provided a well-rounded foundation to design an effective, feasible, and user-centric solution.

Design Solution

I redesigned the Cabin Selection process by restructuring it into a step-by-step flow, placing each stage on its own page. This reduced cognitive load by guiding customers through one clear decision at a time.

The Cabin Categories were moved to a dedicated page, simplifying the experience compared to the previous mixed layout. To replace the confusing Cabin Codes, I introduced two new steps: Ship Location and Deck Number. These leveraged existing backend data endpoints while creating a more intuitive experience.

For the Ship Location step, I designed a clickable cruise ship graphic divided into three sections—Forward, Midship, and Aft—helping customers visually connect their choice to the real-world layout of a ship. The Deck Number step used a tile-based interface, showing all decks (including sold-out ones in a disabled state) to improve clarity and interaction. This tile design also enabled future enhancements like urgency indicators for limited availability or popular family decks.

By collecting preferences for Location and Deck, the system could then display the most relevant available cabins. I also refined the overall UI consistency, layout, and mobile responsiveness, ensuring a smoother, more engaging booking experience.

User Testing

To validate the design concept, I conducted moderated user testing interviews, which provided deeper insights into what information customers valued most.

Testing revealed that the small cabin image included on the card was ineffective, as it was too small to be useful. Customers also expressed a clear need for richer details about cabin features, including larger images and a breakdown of inclusions.

In parallel, my API investigation uncovered that the current system did not provide this level of detail. Combining these findings, I presented the need for an enhanced API to the product team so that future iterations could deliver the richer content customers expected.

Outcome

After finalizing the high-fidelity designs and compiling a detailed UX Research pack for the product team and stakeholders, the feature was ready for handover to the development team.

This initiative highlights my end-to-end design process—from identifying a problem to creating, testing, and refining a solution. While the improvement is currently in the backlog awaiting development, the UX research strongly indicates that, once launched, this new experience will increase Click-Through Rates (CTR) on the Cabin Selection page and contribute to a measurable uplift in the overall Conversion Rate (CVR) for the Cruise booking website.