Revised Information Architecture

Think of landing page as a collection of information pieces that serve user needs. A good Information Architecture (IA) presents and arranges the content in a way that is easy to understand, meets user goals, and can be scaled as the product grows.

So, what did I remove from the current landing page? And why?

1. Reviews

As I’ve mentioned in the “Ideal user flow”, Reviews are only beneficial to the users when they narrow down the results and compare between few options. I get it that Booking.com has tons of (119,530,267) verified reviews which is a big selling point. But who would click on random reviews on the landing page before even searching?

2. Call to Action (CTA)

CTA is very crucial to business and marketing success. As a UX designer, it is not enough (lame) to design the eye-catching CTA and yell at your users everywhere. It is actually like a proposal. You need to hold your users’ hands and give them an irresistible speech at the perfect moment. At the end of the day, all they can say is “Yes, I subscribe.”

So I made a few changes to CTA to put them at the right moment:

Subscribe to get discount — When searching/booking

Refer a friend to get cash back — After successfully booking

Download the app — When using mobile device

3. Recommended destinations

Recommendations can be useful to the users who don’t know where to go. The question is, when the users try to explore and click on a recommended destination, do they want to see a list of hotels right away?

Why don’t we provide travel guides instead?

Booking.com has this amazing Travel guides page where you can find great information of a destination, like “Things to do”, “Best time to visit”, “Average price”, “Weather”, “Transport”, “Food” etc.

I suggest to bring the travel guides up instead of burying it in random hyperlinks. So that when users click on a destination, we provide them useful travel guides first and then lead them to book a hotel. You may argue that it takes two clicks to get to where we want the users to be — the hotel list. However, “Number of clicks” is a plausible metric. In reality, the users don’t mind more clicks as long as each click is joyful and they have continued confidence and pleasure which is called the “scent of information.”

Revised IA