Youth Hostels Australia

Website and bookings redesign 2015

The challenge

To design a new YHA Australia site that provided an inspiring, engaging and interactive experience for travellers to explore and book a hostel or tour allowing YHA to reach new markets and maximise potential online revenue.  

What we did

Visual design and templating

• Redesign of entire YHA website including the complex booking system

• Amplified the brand personality by using inspirational travel imagery

• Contextualised the pricing and packaging using vibrant location imagery to engage and inspire travellers.

Workshops, prototype and usability testing

• 6 group workshops of travellers, YHA members, guests, customer facing and backend staff

• 3 rounds of usability testing with 18 individual participants, including 9 overseas

• Interview style questions followed by task-based testing of functional prototype

• Improved navigation, language and user flow through testing alternatives

• Supplied detailed layered design files for responsive template build in Ektron.

“The new website design looks definitely much better that the old website. It’s more modern, active… it says YHA is fun!”

– Test participant

My role

Design Lead on YHA website from 1999 to 2015, as Creative Director for Boomworks and previously Senior Designer for Red Square:

• Future planning and strategy to extend site capability, expansion into emerging and potential markets, look at efficiencies to streamline existing systems and reduce extraneous effort

• Creative Direction and copywriting

• Visual design driven by data and customer needs

• Supporting all UX activities - workshops, research, usability testing and analysis

• Design guidelines focussing on YHA brand personality and WCAG accessibility

• Leading Boomworks’ visual design team and collaborating with stakeholders.

Outcomes

• A visually engaging and inspirational hostel and travel site driving more bookings

• Quality of website design shifted user attitude from detractors to high promoters

• Grade-A usability scores across the entire redesign

• Increased SUS to 82.5

• Increased NPS to 20.