UX Case Study: Redesigning the Air Peace website

This UX Case study documents the process involved in redesigning the Air Peace Limited home page.

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Air Peace Limited is a private Nigerian airline that has evolved to become West Africa’s fastest-growing airline. The airline was founded in 2013 and has its head office at 25, Sobo Arobiodu Street, Ikeja GRA — Lagos. Air Peace provides commercial passenger and chartered flight services and is currently the biggest airline in Nigeria; with a fleet size of 31 and as of April 2021 operates into 27 locations in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroun, Gambia, Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. The airline’s booking and reservations platform allow users to book flights to available destinations and offers the best flight deals and packages to its customers.

THE CHALLENGE

Create a minimalistic, unique and easy to navigate design that is intuitive, conveys the brand’s value and will increase customer conversion rate.

SCOPE OF WORK

Redesign the airline’s website home page for desktop.

PROJECT TIMELINE

2 weeks

ROLE

User experience researcher, User experience designer and User interface designer.

MY GOALS

When I looked at the current website, I immediately had ideas on what I wanted to improve.

• The first thing I would change is the website layout, using one that will make the website more orderly.
• Next will be to change the UI elements so as to make the website neater, more attractive and give us a more user-friendly and intuitive interface.
• Introduce better spacing of elements and website sections.
• Achieve a minimalist design with a simple layout that is easy for users to navigate and get a better overall experience.
• Design a website that helps users achieve their goal for visiting in fewer steps.

MY APPROACH

• Conduct User experience research and gather UX data through site audit, competitive analysis and user persona.
• Sketch and create wireframes.
• Design high — fidelity mock-up.

SITE AUDIT OF CURRENT AIR PEACE WEBSITE

The first step here was to study the company’s mission and vision. This would help me see how aligned the website is to the goals and values intended to be expressed. Next, was to conduct a basic heuristic evaluation to test the website’s usability, gather feedback to identify design problems, identify opportunities and proffer redesign solutions. The third step was to evaluate the website traffic overview from www.similarweb.com with a particular focus on the bounce rate.

The usability evaluation sought to measure the following:

1. Flexibility and efficiency of use.
2. User control and freedom.
3. Website intuitiveness.

The above value measurements asked the following questions:

1. Can users at both ends of the internet surfing experience spectrum navigate the website easily?
2. Are users’ given the freedom to or presented with options to undo and/or redo a task?
3. Can the user understand the content, icons and concepts on the web interface?
4. How many visitors to the website actually complete a booking or fulfil their purpose of visiting?

PROBLEMS DISCOVERED

1. The website looks quite clustered and without clear segments and a visual hierarchy.
2. The site is a bit rigid and does not give users enough options.
3. An archaic website look that lacks visual appeal.
4. An over 50% bounce rate which I believe a redesign will hugely reduce and conversion increased.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Competition leads to efficiency and especially in a service industry, the customers/users are better off when they have to make choices from a range rather than subject to a monopoly. This competition exists in the Nigerian airline industry, and it aims at putting every brand on its feet and continually striving to be the best. So I did an analysis of a few of Air Peace’s domestic and international competitions such as Ibom Air, Dana Air, Kenya Airways and Qatar Airways.

Compared to its competition, the Air Peace website looks very obsolete and presents a weak content structure. However, Air Peace remains the go-to choice for Nigerian travellers because of its wide domestic destination coverage, and best travel deals (flight tickets and ticket change fees). By highlighting these comparative advantages and presenting a more intuitive website layout, Air Peace can remain the best option for its domestic customers and break into other target markets as well.

USER PERSONA

Airline websites receive different groups of visitors from different age groups all with one goal: book a flight in minutes.

Our user personas cut across different backgrounds and ages.

REDESIGN SOLUTION

My redesign solution is basically aimed at improving the users’ experience and increasing customer conversion rates at every funnel. A funnel is used to track the steps that lead to conversion. The purchase funnel goes thus:

• Visit www.flyairpeace.com
• Select route(s) and dates
• Enter passenger details
• Select seats (optional)
• Confirm reservation
• Proceed to payment

With these in mind, the key redesign solutions and features include:

• The hero section: Create an assuring and warm ambience.
• The hero text: Put up a welcoming value proposition.
• The booking section: Make it more visible, clear and attractive.
• The page layout: Improve the general layout of the website with an emphasis on minimalistic and classy presentation.
• Frequent flyer program: Increase awareness of the Peace Advantage program.
• Widen the funnel: Redesign other sections to align with the overall minimalist theme.
• Customer support: Introduce a 24hours on-site customer support chat system (floating button ).

WIREFRAMES

The UX research produced data that I analyzed and came up with a list of relevant visual themes, elements and effective copy guidelines for the new home page. Below is the wireframe of the redesigned home page.

HIGH FIDELITY MOCKUP

Paying keen attention to the industry the business is in and having the users’ needs as a top priority, I decided to work with the following UI guidelines in order to aid better visuals.

• A clear navigation structure.
• Well defined and larger UI elements.
• Better use of white space.
• Use of clearer font and typeface.
• Use of distinctive colours and appealing images.

USER TESTING

To test the usability of this redesign and to know if this solution soothes the discovered pain points of the users, I conducted usability testing with six (6) participants. I walked them through the journey and asked them questions about their experience.

The measures of usability testing include:

• Learnability.
• Efficiency.
• Satisfaction.
• Effectiveness.

The key findings from the usability test include:

• Users can quickly complete a task on the platform.
• Users find the new home page interface quite user-friendly.
• Users find the new page satisfying and easy to understand and use.

LEARNINGS

My key learning from this project is that it enlightened me on digital designs for a wide range of users from a broad age range. I learnt how to analyze user research data and think up solutions to fill these needs and I had fun doing that.

I also learned more about user-centred design and its importance to business growth.

CONCLUSION

Even though the current Air Peace Limited website can be considered functional in that it allows users to carry out the reasons for visiting (ticket booking), I strongly feel it does not measure up to the standards of a global brand with a large customer base. This redesign is really an improvement of the current website as it improves users’ experience and promotes the brand’s values.

There is no doubt that in our modern world, every business needs a standard online digital presence that communicates its values to potential customers and continuously improves this digital product to soothe customers needs. This redesign will meet those needs and increase customer conversion rates.

Through this UX/UI case study, I have learned a lot of new things. This experience has pushed me to continue and improve my design and research skills. If you have any feedback for improving my skills, please feel free to comment!😊