During this project I lead the User Experience design and User Interface design of TravelAwaits.com. I collaborated with our Creative Director, Mitch Renfew, to create responsive layouts designed to encourage our users’ curiosity about travel. TravelAwaits was established fill a void in the travel industry, focusing on travelers age 50 and up. TravelAwaits spotlights quaint small towns, unique experiences in big cities, delicious restaurants, and fabulous stays.

PROBLEM SUMMARY

This is TravelAwait’s old desktop landing page that I did not design.

TravelAwaits targets users age 50 and up because we felt it was important for the travel industry to finally pay attention to these travelers who have the time and hard-earned investments to experience life on their terms. We want to make destinations accessible to all readers through our writers’ first-hand knowledge and authentic experiences. My design team set out to design a site to help our users learn more about retirement travel, lifestyle changes, finances, snowbirding, and relocation. Our articles genuinely showcase this next phase of life because they are most often written by authors in our target demographic. During the rebrand and expansion it was important to us to design the site around the needs of our older demographic so that the travel information and their individual travel journeys felt accessible.

Here is what TravelAwait’s landing page looked like before the rebrand. User feedback helped guide us to address several issues during the redesign process:

  • The majority of users found the header font to be hard to read.

  • The light blue brand color made text too hard to read for most users.

  • Users couldn’t easily find information on retirment.

  • It wasn’t clear to most users that the articles where written by travel experts who were 50 or older.

One of the biggest issues was that Suggest did not really have a brand voice or editorial niche. Once the Suggest team leads decided that they wanted to focus on a particular type of reader the design team worked closely with them to come up with a new look that would be more appealing to the newly defined user base.

 

PROJECT GOAL

TravelAwaits was designed with several goals in mind for our readers:

  • Better target the core demographic of people 50+. At the time the largest % of audience in the 25-34 range.

  • Engage the users with content written by travel experts who are also mostly age 50+ that the users can relate to and trust.

  • Enable users to easily find information about retiring in a new location whether that be domestic abroad.

  • Promote travel products and VBRO rentals our users can buy or book through the website.

TARGET AUDIENCE

The primary audience for TravelAwaits have the following traits:

  • Over the age of 50.

  • Have the financial ability to travel.

  • Comfortable with shopping and booking trips online.

  • From all ethnicities, orientations, and family types.

 

RESEARCH


We lead the TravelAwaits team in rebranding exercises including:

  • Conducting a competitor analysis.

  • Doing a content audit.

  • Designing a sitemap to restructure the information architecture.

  • Creating personas to help the TravelAwaits team better visualize and empathize with the end users.

  • Making user journey maps for new key experiences the TravelAwaits team prioritized for the end users.

Additionally TravelAwaits team periodically conducts focus groups and sends out surveys to gage the users’s satisfaction with the site and to understand their travel interests. Gathering user feedback helps highlight the major design changes that are needed and make note of the desired features of our users that result in the design of new page types and widgets. Because the TravelAwaits team is constantly gathering data on user behavior and site satisfaction the site was constantly being revised to provide an optimal user experience.

Below is a screenshot of the boards we used for the redesign exercises. It provides an outline of our creative process.

 

FINAL PRODUCT

The biggest goal of the redesign project was to better target our core demographic by visually indicating this site is just for them. Before the redesign only 43% of the audience was in the target 45-50+ age range, with the largest % of audience in the 25-34 range (26%). Post redesign, 71% of the audience was over 45, with the largest % of audience in the 55-64 range (26%). Those trends continue today and the site design helps to quickly establish to readers and partners who the site is for. In terms of affiliate success the redesign helped the TravelAwaits team reach sales goals because the site now pulls an average of 35 Vrbo bookings a month on which translates into ~$2500/month in affiliate commissions for the site.

The final design is now live at TravelAwaits.com. The redesign process resulted in a new landing page that better promotes collections of featured articles and the creation of the Retirement Awaits hub that gives users information on financial planning, healthcare, lifestyle, retirement locations, tips on retirement planning. Please click the links below to view prototypes of the landing page and retirement hub.