Troupe

Background

Troupe’s mission is to simplify and streamline the group trip planning process. Organizing group trips on our platform is cost-free for planners, and our sole revenue stream comes from bookings made through our partner, Vrbo. In an effort to increase bookings, we needed to make substantial improvements to the user experience within our Stays vertical.

Goal

Increase base line of trips that have revenue-generating suggested stays from 23% to 30%.

Team

4 x Engineers
1 x Product Manager
1 x Product Designer

Role

Lead Product Designer
User Researcher

Duration

4 weeks

Identifying pain points

To kick things off, we sifted through qualitative data gathered from our weekly user interviews, focusing on the stays experience. From this exploration, we uncovered the following insights:

A general lack of awareness about the option to search stays on Troupe.

"I didn’t see the VRBO integration button, but I would’ve used it if I saw it.”

Cumbersome navigation while browsing listings, especially on smaller devices.

"I have to scroll a lot on mobile when there are lots of listings”

Suboptimal learning curve

"Not everyone knew how to use it the right way. People would pop in a link and it would inconsistently work and I had to go in to manually update it.”

Armed with this knowledge, the team did a high-level user journey to brainstorm ways we could improve the experience. Following this, we pinpointed and prioritized the most significant challenges to focus on for targeted improvements.

Cost/Value mapping

We identified key user needs that could have the most significant impact on increasing the addition of Vrbos. We formulated our hypothesis based on these insights.

Hypothesis

We believe that travelers experience a hurdle when suggesting stays due to uncertainty about the next steps. Alleviating that pain would provide travelers with a smoother suggesting experience, although a commitment to using Troupe would still be required.

We believe that revenue generating stays will be achieved if travelers attain confidence in suggesting with more clear access points to suggest.

Assumption writing

After developing the hypothesis, we generated assumptions considering factors surrounding desirability, viability, feasibility, usability, and ethics.

MSCW

Building on our assumption writing process, we established our MoSCoW list, highlighting the critical aspects of this project.

User flow

A key adjustment to the existing user flow was to prioritize search functionality, ensuring that travelers wouldn't overlook the option to search for stays on Troupe. The current flow involves a couple of extra steps before travelers can start their search. For more efficiency, we eliminated these additional steps.

Lofi explorations

I explored various approaches to highlight the search button, making users aware of Troupe's search function. In an effort to increase engagement, I also investigated ways of overhauling our listings page to simplify ways for travelers to compare stays and gain contextual information about each stay’s location.

Spotlighted optimizations

Leading a feedback session with Product and Engineering, we identified optimizations with the most impact, ensuring a balance between time efficiency and cost-effectiveness for the Engineering team.

Search CTA

Decreased number of steps to search page.

Existing
The existing pattern used a split CTA button that housed the option to search for stays in a secondary list of options, which led to user unawareness regarding the ability to search for stays on Troupe.

Optimization
Render a button resembling a search bar to make the option of searching for stays priority and more apparent.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

Improved scannability of stay listings.

Existing
The stay cards were listed in a single column and also pretty large, primarily due to unnecessary whitespace. The map and listings were also separated so users had to toggle between them for location context.

Optimization
Reduce the size of the stay card for improved scannability. On desktop, add an additional column plus combine both map and listings to eliminate the need for toggling between the two.

Suggested destinations

In an effort to further streamline the search process and encourage more use of our search function, we leveraged the empty state to highlight suggested destinations. This provides users with a one-click solution to find stays for the destinations they're considering for their group trip.

Outcome

Over several months, the percentage of trips that added a revenue-generating stay increased to 44%—surpassing our initial goal of 30%—marking a 52% increase. These results have since remained consistently at double the initial starting point.

Reflection

Balancing business goals with user needs was essential in our approach. Adding a stay could be done in three ways: through search, via URL, or via Google places. To maintain a positive user experience, we opted not to eliminate the options to add a 3rd party link via URL or Google. Instead, we prioritized the search function as the primary choice and positioned the other two as secondary options.
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Thoughtful consideration of logic was also needed for this project. The status across other verticals played a role in shaping the stays search functionality. For instance, if a planner had a list of suggested destinations, these would be featured in the stays search empty state. However, if they already finalized their destination, clicking the search button would automatically initiate a search for that specific location. In close collaboration with the engineering team, we conducted thorough testing to ensure that the logic operated seamlessly.

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