Among the projects I was tasked with, Homepage took the most priority. The business required an updated “face” to the site, both visually and functionally. The initial analysis resulted in a number of goals:
- Gather business requirements and prioritise content
- Uncover relevant analytics data on the page’s performance and usage
- Get users’ feedback on the page, on its preferred structure, content and design
- Research the competition, perform a landscape analysis
- Present the design plan according to the research; approve it with stakeholders and plan the execution with all relevant departments

Defining the problem
In addition to the obvious need of a “face-lift”, there was an expectation from the business for the Homepage to increase conversion both of booking flights, and other promoted services. At the starting point, there was not a lot of user data (except comments on Usabilla), which meant a lot of reliance on new user research, to uncover what does and doesn’t work, as well as what would work and how.

Basically, we wanted to improve the page, according to internal and external feedback, and measure the success in conversion uplift and positive user comments.
So research was where my work began.

Discovery
Running multiple research channels, I had to absorb, summarise and present a lot of information. Planning a timeline with the team helped us all be involved in the process. I found cooperation crucial, whether it be the design and competition workshops I facilitated in the UK and Germany, or the feedback my peers left on the design drafts on the office wall - I made sure everyone was on board and understood what we’re doing and why.

Given just enough autonomy and budget, I’ve used multiple testing methods, e.g. lab, guerilla and remote card testing, to bring as much quantitative and qualitative knowledge as possible of how customers use our homepage and why.

Design
The initial wireframes of the new homepage were very well received internally, thanks to the continuous involvement of the Product Management, Marketing, Development, SEO etc. in the discovery phase. After making sure the proposed functionality was possible back-end-wise, I’ve validated the preferred design via a guerilla testing.

The result was just one design direction that had the most consensus, as the most promising to improve both the revenue and user satisfaction.

Next steps
Development has begun and I’ve started to move on to the high fidelity designs, and planning the search and book flow, following the work above. But unfortunately our time at Thomas Cook was cut short, as the company ceased to exist…

Summary
Even though the Homepage was only one of the site’s areas I was responsible for design-wise, it felt like of the most important to the business. I found it crucial to make my work visible at all times and liaise with all other departments, and was pleasantly surprised just how much they wanted to be involved - whether it’s my update on users feedback, or a design workshop where everybody sketched their ideas. It was also very freeing to have autonomy, budget and enough time (3-4 months) for a proper research, as we all felt that was crucial to understanding what we’re trying to achieve.

It was a shame our vision was not fulfilled in time, but I’m ready to take what I’ve learned and apply my motivation to a new project!