Seat selection is an important step for ticket purchases. It ensures customers with optimal travel experiences to their preference, and gives airline companies, as long as travel agents like CheapOair, a way to monetize. However, CheapOair didn’t have offer an intuitive experience for seat selection through out the purchase flow. Therefore, we decided to redesign the seat selection tool that focuses on the seat map.
By providing a better and easier experience to select seats, we expected to have a higher seat selection rate.
By showcasing seat options in a digestible way, we expected customers to find more suitable and attractive flight options for their needs, and ultimately help us increase bookings.
Seat options can be a critical deciding factor for some customers, therefore we put the entry point on the flight detail page. However, data showed that not all customers select seats at this step, and we also knew from historical research that the detail page houses a lot of information that some customers feel that it’s overwhelming. Therefore we make the map a two-fold widget, which customers always see the route overview on the top, and can choose to see the detail map based on their preferences. For most cases, the map will be open by default so customers don’t miss it.
Once the map is open, customers get to see the travelers on the top, map horizontally in the middle, the legend and the price breakdown on the bottom. This is based on the mental model that we’ve discovered. When it comes to seat selection, customers usually start with thinking about how many people on this trip that needed to be assigned with seats. Then they think about what seat options are available. Finally when they make the decision, they want to an easy way to see individual and total spending.
Because the page has a lot of other widgets, it was clear that we needed to present the map in a horizontal way, especially for certain flights that are very long and narrow. Hence we designed the widget around the concept of horizontal presentation.
For customers who need handicap accessibility, it is critical to identify accessibility-compliant seats easily. It is even more critical that they can do it before checking out so they don’t either accidentally get tickets that don’t serve them well or lose the chance to notify the airport and airlines staff for needed assistance. Therefore, we added a checkbox underneath the map so customers can check it to highlight accessibility seats so they can easily choose ones that are good. It also helps other customers who don’t need it to no select them out of accident.
