During the pandemic, more people start to realize that technology does change the world. We use technological device to order pickup, delivery, appointment and more. Even for the travel industry, there are more virtual tours taking place than ever before. And to book a trip, you even don’t need to consult the travel operation specialist in person. Within just a few clicks, your trip has been booked. To achieve all these, UI/UX design has become more crucial and people should learn more about it.

If you are wondering what makes a good website, you may probably want to know the basic ones: what is UI/UX design, how it is normally work in travel industry.

Let’s find out now!

What is UI design?

To broaden the concept of UI design, it is an abbreviation of user interface design. UI design is more of a digital term, referring to the interaction between user and digital device/product. For example, you want to order a coffee on your smart phone and you choose to open the “Starbucks” app. Opening the app and switch the interface from “Home” to “Order”, you will see the icon and text is hovered from grey to green. It is a small detail but the hovered colour imply that you are on this particular page now.

In relation to website and apps, UI design considers the look, how customers feel when interacting with this particular page. The central idea of UI design is to make a product as intuitive as possible. Thus, UI designer needs to carefully consider every detail including a small text, hover colour and how the animation is changed during the interaction.

A UI designer is responsible for the transference of a product’s development, research, content and layout. UI designer is literally a magician who can turn the whole digital logics into an attractive, guiding and responsive experience for users.

What is UX design?

It seems that UI design is pretty clear and seems to cover all digital aspects of a digital product/service. UX design, also known as user experience design is slightly ignored at this point. To interpret this term, there is an example given to help you understand more about it.

Example A: You walk down the street, and see a large billboard that can be hardly ignored.

Example B: You have a banking app, and you are about to make an e-transfer to your friend, the whole process is quite fluent and east to complete.

These two examples show how the UX design can make users feel, the billboard is quite outstanding and may attract the potential customers who have interest on beauty. The e-transfer example on the other hand, demonstrates how a user can accomplish the desired task.

UX design can be applied in all kinds of scenario, whether it is non-digital or digital. The ultimate purpose of UX design is to create easy and efficient experience for users, to make a connection between (potential) users and products. It focuses on the overall feelings of the experience.

Difference between UI and UX design

You might see that UI and UX design are mentioned together frequently. The fact is that UI and UX design are collaborating and interacting with each other.

The main difference is that UX designer focuses on the overall feel of experiences, UI designer tends to look into how the digital interface functions and looks.

UX designers take the user’s desired tasks into their consideration and try to figure out what steps the users will take during the checkout/booking process, what kind of tasks they should accomplish and how straightforward the process can be.

UI designers emphasizes the visual aspects of user journey, all the detailed interaction users can encounter and how to achieve this visually. UX designers play a role as building the base and structure of a building while UI designers focus on the internal renovation and decoration of the building.

Why should travel agencies focus on the UI and UX design?

Unlike the general e-commerce websites which sell only the commodities with a refund policy. Travel websites or apps are like the combination of both services and products. It is a consistent process that can be divided into three sections, pre-travel, during-travel and post-travel. All three stages are crucial and need complicated UX and UI design.

In terms of pre-travel stage, it is actually a huge area that covers before purchase and after purchase but before departure. Customers often take a long time to do some research and filter their favourite itinerary using the tool embedded in the website or app.

UX designer needs to understand which page users will stay on and for how long and how the whole booking and browsing process can be satisfied fluently. For a travel website, users expect to see beautiful and inspiring content that provides them with a seamless experience from the beginning to the end.

During-travel part is also a part that needs to be addressed carefully. This is the part which travel agencies can show their carefulness and receive positive impression. Travellers who book on your website expect you to have a comprehensive and thoughtful service during their trips. Sending welcome emails or texts, a detailed reminder of weather and upcoming events. However, the process of designing these can be complicated and requires both UI and UX designers to cooperate.

Post-travel stage allows users to throw back and review the services they receive. Making the review process more delighting and convenient is crucial. However, how to make users to willingly contribute to the websites/apps is a quite tough task for UI and UX designer.

How can UI and UX design apply to the travel website?

UI and UX design can be applied on almost every aspect of a travel agency website. We also divide the design process into three parts as what we discussed above to see how UI and UX design can be implemented.

At the pre-travel section, people who land on your website can be classified into two large groups generally, people who have a destination and have some plans for themselves, people who are here to search for information and have no clue about their future trips.

For people with interest on booking flights and stuff on the website, the UI designer should include a smart search bar at the centre of the homepage banner, indicating clearly the three basic functions that most travellers prefer to search for, such as flights, hotels, car rentals, related travel products, etc.

When clicking on each of the relevant button, the interface should be adapted to the banner seamlessly. The UX designer should demonstrate the logic flow of each service travel company carries. Considering what the users will be seeing after clicking the “Search” button, and how the product display page can best generate conversion and interests.

For people who have no clue about where to go and what to visit, there should be some popular travel products or travel blogs on the homepage for people to view. UI designers need to ensure the visuals of how the travel products display on the homepage. UX designer, on the other hand, should be aware of what most people are interested in, what travel products should be highlighted and how the CTA button can be implemented. To see if it is good to implement a sidebar to demonstrate necessary information marked by the user.

In terms of the during-travel part, we normally mean the process between after-booking and finishing the trip. When user complete the booking section. UI designers should consider not only the website side, but also the mobile side. Email and text notification should be sent to users after successfully purchasing the product or booking the flight and stuff. How an email should look like determines how users think about your brand in the future.

UX designers need to implement some clickable buttons in the emails and text messages. To think ahead about what users might be interested in after seeing the email. There might be some interesting tourist spots they want to explore but have no clue about where to get the ticket. Or they would like to book some one-day trips in advance so that they do not have to do more research before departure.

When users arrive at the destination, it does not mean that your job as a travel website has finished. To kindly remind users about the next day’s weather, booked trips and booked hotels/cars is necessary. A convenient customer service button is needed, travellers can always have some questions and need assistance.

Post-travel stage is an important one that help to increase your brand presence. What UI designer do is to design an “Ask for review” form with rating and optional comment box. It is also necessary to design a review page on user’s personal centre on the website. These reviews and ratings indirectly reflect the brand’s presence and website conversion.

UX designers need to think about what to perform when users choose to leave either positive or negative comments, and how to encourage users to make a second purchase or choose your brand repetitively.