Website Research & Audit
Tourism Portal
About
The website is the main tourism portal of a country, containing information about popular destinations, restaurants, hotels, entertainment, and useful information for travellers.
Challenge
As a new agency stepped in to support the portal, they needed to update customer information and build a strategic foundation for future product development — all while new updates were already in the backlog. The main challenge was balancing UX research as the sole researcher while also leading a team of two designers.
Result
Research provided valuable insights about the website's audience, pains, preferences, and behaviours. Expert, analytics, and usability reviews added additional improvement points added to the product backlog.
Audience & Personas
The main target audience was divided into two groups: couples and families. Target groups were formed after analysing initial data about tourists from the government department of tourism. Six people per group were interviewed and participated in usability testing studies.
Usability Testing
Usability testing research was enforced by expert review to cover all aspects of the website and mobile app.
Analytics Review
The website had Google Analytics and Hotjar properly set up, allowing additional hypotheses to emerge that traditional qualitative studies couldn't uncover.
Information Architecture
As one of the severe issues was website navigation, additional IA research was conducted. The process included content inventory, card sorting, new navigation prototyping, tree-testing, and control testing.