Corendon Airlines partnered with SHERPA to redesign their website in line with their B2C-focused business strategy. We are delighted to have designed a user-centred, lean and guiding experience despite the challenges of the pandemic.
About the project
Corendon Airlines -with its “Make a Difference” slogan- has been a pioneer in the aviation industry from the day it was established. The airline not only carries passengers from Europe to popular holiday destinations but also provides direct flights to many cities in Anatolia. Keeping their motto, “Your holiday starts in our flights” in mind, we started to ideate how we can reflect the unique experience delivered in the physical world to the digital in the year 2019.
Before anything else, we started the project with thorough research to identify the user needs and business goals and reveal their relationship. Combining our deep expertise with the feedback taken from the stakeholders and users, we defined the most prominent areas to focus on in the experience we were about to craft.
In line with the user needs and expectations, we set our goal as building an experience that facilitates decision-making for users, supported by a self-service approach and that provides guidance when needed. We then translated this goal into three strategic principles that served as a design compass throughout the redesign process: “Practical & result-driven”, “Curiosity-inducing”, “Hand-holding”.
Throughout the experience design process, under the guidance of our design methodology SHERPATH, we conducted heuristic analysis, benchmarking, and stakeholder interviews to understand the current landscape and lay a solid foundation for a brand new experience.
Next, we transformed the feedback and insights we gathered into user stories and discussed the expectations of different stakeholders in detail. We schematised the prioritised stories in light of the main principles we previously defined, finalised the wireframes using the paper sketching method, and created the final user interface design.
During the project, the global pandemic had dire effects on the aviation industry, but we endured all the uncertainty and challenges thanks to the Corendon Airlines product team’s focus on the user experience and their faith in the project. Defining and responding to the altering user needs with the pandemic became a top priority in this period. Yet, we managed to triumph over this challenging task with our flexible design methodology and included experience design solutions indigenous to the changing user needs into the new experience.
Business objectives
Parallel with our desire to be positioned as our clients’ UX department and internalise Corendon Airlines’ needs, we thoroughly examined the short & long-term strategic goals, current & potential markets, benchmarks, target audiences, sales channels, and the brand perception of the company wanted to create.
Reaching younger segments
Offering tailor-made value-added services
Designing a modern, lean and enjoyable experience
Serving not only couples but also solo travelers
Reaching to comfort-seekers
Corendon Airlines, mainly carrying families with kids and elderly couples, aimed to reach younger segments, solo travellers, and comfort seekers. While broadening their customer base, Corendon also sought to bring tailor-made solutions to their passengers and offer value-added services. To integrate these into the service flow, the information architecture and the user interface needed to be upgraded. So, we set out to craft a pleasant, modern and straightforward experience that would evoke the joy of travelling with the second users start browsing for possible destinations.
Our approach
Although dreaming about a vacation brings excitement to our souls, most of the time we as users, face complex experiences when it comes to making actual arrangements, like purchasing a flight ticket. The planning step of a holiday journey is mainly filled with questions like:
We envisioned a seamless experience for Corendon Airlines passengers that makes it possible to purchase a flight ticket with ease, plan a whole holiday from end-to-end, and find guiding, crystal clear answers to their questions —with minimum cognitive load.
Process
After shaking hands on Corendon Airlines’ business goals with the product team and stakeholders, we started the process by analysing the current user experience and a competitive benchmark. We focused on parts of the existing website that were open to improvement to achieve our goal of delivering a practical user experience in a world that becomes more digital every single day.
We analysed corendonairlines.com’s desktop & mobile versions heuristically in light of globally accepted Nielsen & Norman principles. Next, we evaluated competitors in the context of functionality and usability, determining their strengths & weaknesses.
Our project roadmap in a nutshell
After completing the discovery phase, we created the user stories to lay a foundation for the experience we wanted to build. We sought answers to questions like: “What is the need behind this demand?”, “Why is this a need?”, “Which users would benefit?”. We have taken into account, listed and prioritised all features users might need in a ticket purchase flow, starting with flight search all the way to payment.
After prioritising the user stories and locking the scope for phase one with the product team, we started working on content grouping, just like a library categorising thousands of books for the readers to access quickly.
We re-designed the information architecture of the website to improve the navigation and the categorisation of content. We simplified the main menu to three main titles: “Book & Manage”, “Explore”, and “Support Center”. Thus, we offered direct routes for users that would like to access their ticket & flight details, discover all the destinations or campaigns, be informed, or get help.
Corendon Airlines - Category tree
Following the information architecture stage, we started focusing on user flows so that we can map the interaction scenarios of the current system and see how user stories and system capabilities would act together.
Ticketing flow, which would act as the backbone of the new Corendon Airlines experience, was the centre of our attention. We crafted all possible scenarios that could occur depending on parameters like date, passenger number, ticket class and others.
We did not take the easy way and design a happy path for a single passenger travelling one way, but we fleshed out the experience of a user who would buy tickets for four adults, two children and one infant with the need for extra luggage, a vegetarian meal and avoid exit seats. Thus, we conceptually designed a structure that would offer a simple, fast and seamless experience no matter what the user needs.
Corendon Airlines - Ticketing user flows
User flows that we created provided us with the foundation upon which we could build interaction scenarios and visual language. In the next step, we created content maps to find the right tone in the experience, page by page. We prepared all the content in line with the experience strategy, from the main menu items to call-to-action buttons, error messages and labels.
When you’re working with an international airline, even though you write the content in a single language first (English) you have to consider how the system will respond when languages like German or Russian are selected and how the related components will react to variations. Bearing all the intricate details in mind, we carefully crafted clear, plain, and simple copies for the users to make sure language changes affect the interface as little as possible.
In the last step, we tackled ticketing, support centre and destination pages that would form the website’s skeleton. We designed the experience of these sections with a mobile-first approach as we did for the rest of the website, making sure we deliver the best possible mobile experience for all user stories we had defined.
First, we designed wireframes for each of these sections. We concentrated on making it easy for users to make all their choices easily in the ticketing process. We built the destination pages so that they could enjoy getting all the useful information about their destinations -like cultural attractions, nightlife, and weather with a few clicks. Also, we built a support centre with comprehensive information yet easy to navigate so that travellers find all the answers they need on topics ranging from check-in to baggage allowances effortlessly. Once we finalized the wireframes with the product team’s feedback, we went ahead and designed a modern user interface that would reflect the brand universe of Corendon Airlines while honing the usability of the experience.
Corendon Airlines’ new website is now live, thanks to the hard work of product and development teams who coped with the challenges of the pandemic in parallel. The new experience differentiates Corendon Airlines from its competitors with a %100 user-centric approach and we are glad to have been the UX partner of this visionary brand.
SHERPA, successfully blending business goals with a lean digital experience, exceeded our expectations by their rigorous and constructive approach every step of the way.
