Lonely Planet: Destination Hubs
Guiding travelers to their perfect trip
Guiding travelers to their perfect trip
Guiding travelers to their perfect trip
The Destination hub is a scalable template that serves as the backbone of the entire Lonely Planet site. It covers 5,000 cities, countries and continents and offers content that is authentic and "un-googleable" information that travelers need when they start planning their dream trip.
The Destination hub is a scalable template that serves as the backbone of the entire Lonely Planet site. It covers 5,000 cities, countries and continents and offers content that is authentic and "un-googleable" information that travelers need when they start planning their dream trip.
The Destination hub is a scalable template that serves as the backbone of the entire Lonely Planet site. It covers 5,000 cities, countries and continents and offers content that is authentic and "un-googleable" information that travelers need when they start planning their dream trip.
Problem statement
The trip planning process can be difficult. It requires opening multiple browser tabs and scouring the internet for information that is relevant and authentic. The previous version of the Destination Hub depriorizted planning-based content, didn't have modular components that could change based on the content available on the hub, and ultimately wasn't mobile first.
Design process
When redesigning a content hub page, I followed a concise and effective design process. I began by interviewing key stakeholders to gather requirements. Next, I organized and led brainstorming sessions to generate ideas. We then aligned on the project scope and set milestones. To ensure everyone was on board, I created wireframes (below) that were approved by both the business and tech teams. Additionally, I conducted thorough competitive analysis, both direct and indirect, to gather insights. Armed with this information, I designed multiple concepts for the page. Finally, I conducted internal usability testing to ensure a seamless user experience.
This led to a beautiful site experience that married Business, Editorial and user goals. Once the project launched, we found that users were engaging with our planning-based content which was our primary goal of the redesign.
Personalization concept
Once the redesigned page template was launched, our team continued it ideate around adding personalization elements throughout the page. We knew through ongoing UX Research that no two travelers are the same and personalization was something they were heavily looking. We created a prototype that asked a user to indicate why they on that Destination Hub and what were their interests (which would change based on the type of Destination). From those selections, the Destination Hub would adjust content based on the intent and interest of the traveler.
The concept tested well and paved the way for future personalization projects.
Additional visual exploration
In the Design Phase, I explored different stylings across a spectrum of safe option to pushing the boundaries of our brand design. Because the rest of our site wasn't being redesigned, I shelved the below options but it was still enjoyable to figure out how we could start thinking about our newly selected serif and breaking out from only using the traditional Lonely Planet blue in the design.
The conclusion
The new Destination Hub was a huge success for our team. We increased our pages per session, scroll depth and time on site. While also decreasing our bounce rate. Additionally, our planning-based content was interacted with 10% more than the control. Because of this, the team continued to iterate and build off the first phase and continues to find ways to improve the design.
