As with our previous blog we’re using EyeQuant, a unique eye-tracking business born out of a decade of academic research. Their visual attention analysis and design metrics help you create a website that consistently converts, by ensuring the most important information is right where your customer’s eyes are.

When it comes to booking a short break or holiday, we all know everyone has different preferences. Some people will know the exact dates they want and make decisions purely on what is available on those dates, whereas others will be more flexible on date selection so they can secure other features like a specific location, type of accommodation or even price.

Understanding this, it is important that a short break website caters for all user buyer behaviours, an area which is extremely problematic for Alton Towers. As it stands the current user journey is based entirely on date selection first and only displays accommodation options available on the dates selected.

Shoehorning everyone into a single user journey like this is a sure-fire way to decrease the number of sales or conversions produced. Alton Towers is a big enough brand to get away with this, as it benefits from being the only place you can book the Alton Towers hotels. However, the point of this series is to show that even well-known brands can improve their user journeys and therefore, smaller companies can take learnings from our observations to do the same.

Let’s explore the short breaks homepage in more detail. There is plenty of attention on this page in the right areas, mostly at the top, however, if you look at the heat map below you can see there’s only a small amount on the sticky bar at the bottom.

Perhaps, given it’s the same purple as a lot of the site it doesn’t really stand out that much, which is a shame as this is the search function you would want users to start with.

It could definitely be more obvious, even loading it in slightly later with a subtle animation would help. 

Which hotel shall we pick? 

Okay, so let’s move on and browse which hotels we can book on the dates we want; this is where things start to get kind of clunky. Once I’ve selected my dates I’m able to browse through all the available hotel options. On this page, you can see on the heatmap that there is some attention in important areas; the number of available options, the names of the hotels, but an important part that isn’t getting much attention at all is the CTA button. It’s gold and doesn’t really stand out. 

Clicking on one of the options takes you through to its own page where you can see further details, photos and book your stay. Let’s try the Stargazing Pods (they sound kinda cool). According to the heatmap, there’s a lot of attention on the top left of the page when they first land, which is strange because actually, the most important part of the site is on the right-hand side, the sticky booking box with the dates and the CTA ‘View Accommodation’. 

There is a gallery of photos but it’s not obvious at all and a lot of the photos are low quality or not really that clear, especially when you look at the page for the Splash Landings Hotel.

As we browse the different room options in each hotel the user journey starts to become frustrating. For example, if we’re looking at the Stargazing Pods but we want to check availability and prices for an alternative date, after clicking “amend” on the sticky booking box, rather than re-loading just the options for Stargazing Pods, we end up back on the full list of hotels. 

When browsing the hotel rooms available in each option, it’s not clear what the differences are between the rooms and there’s not much detail about the features. It appears that the price difference is based on the styling of the room and it’s a missed opportunity to highlight the USPs of each room type.

When I first looked at this site for my own family trip, I wanted to book the Treehouse as this sleeps 8 people, but it told me each time I looked at different dates it was sold out. There was no option to see the dates on which it was available. Plus, as I said, every time I altered the dates I ended up back on the main hotel list, rather than on the Enchanted Forest Hotel page which is where the Treehouses are. 

Missed opportunities to upsell

Looking at the heatmap further down this page, the information available is easy to digest. However, it could look a lot nicer with a design upgrade. Once we confirm which accommodation we’d like to book, and click “Book” we are then offered some upgrades. These passes and additional nights are actually listed below the “Proceed to payment” CTA, which we don’t want them to do. We want them to buy more and increase their spend. The hierarchy of this content could definitely be moved around to encourage more people to purchase those add ons.

One of the add ons is a two-day pass which is a significantly better value deal than buying a one-day pass. Alton Towers is missing a huge opportunity here, to highlight this as “good value” or “special offer” and upsell that pass before the user pays. I know if I had seen that more clearly, I would definitely have bought it for the extra money it is, given the high price of the one-day pass. (Yes, they don’t make as much money on the second day’s entry but it gets the customer there for an extra day to spend more money in person.)

Creating a booking journey that works for all buyers

You will see from our reimagined design that, not only have we changed the user journey to make it easier for different types of buyers but we have also changed how the accommodation information is displayed so that it is easy to digest, ensuring all users will be able to find the options that work best for them.

Read more: 20 proven ways to improve sales on your website

After some deliberation, we decided to keep the tabs for the hotel room options but ensured that they each had clear differences shown, without the user having to scroll down to review them. Small icons to represent each one makes it very clear and user friendly.

Further down the page we’ve cleaned up and redesigned the sections that show facilities, where to eat and also the reviews that will help build credibility in the user’s journey, prior to booking. 

The biggest change is linked to my own personal frustration with the site, having tried to change and check dates for different rooms and their availability during my own booking process. What would be much easier, as shown on our concept site, is the ability to change and update the dates for your selected hotel within the sticky booking box. This way, users stay on the hotel page they have already selected and can find the room they want on alternative dates – much easier. 

We’ve also added some additional features to the sticky booking box, depending on where you are in the booking journey. As you can see below, the calendar sits within the box when you want to amend your dates, and finally, once you’ve chosen your room on the correct date there is some sparkle on there. The CTA button has some small stars and the price is updated to gold. 

The main goal of this redesign is to ensure the users find it really easy to book – if they do, they’re so much more likely to do so on a date that suits them rather than going around the houses trying to find what they want. It’s off-putting and will lose Alton Towers’ sales. From my own personal experience of trying to book a specific room, I can tell you that although I did book, it was frustrating when I couldn’t find a date that wasn’t sold out. 

I think everyone is looking forward to short breaks this year, so what better time to make sure it works well, ready for the post-lockdown rush! 

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