united.com Door-to-Door Baggage

united.com Door-to-Door Baggage

United Air Lines

Define

United Air Lines discovered a marketing insight that showed upscale consumers looking for a more convenient method to get their bags from point A to B. An internal market and product strategy was born, and with it a call to Billups Design to help realize this vision alongside United’s shipping partner FedEx. The goal of the project was to make the service as easy to use for travelers booking their bags with Door to Door Baggage. The product was to be architected, designed, usability tested, built and launched in 3 months. Did we make the deadline? Read more to find out.

Discover

The project began with further researching the behavior of travelers when they check bags and larger items and when they ship packages with FedEx. We found that some consumers were willing to purchase and ship their bags during post-checkout if the system was easy to use and reasonably priced. Further white board sessions dug deep into United’s ecommerce and loyalty systems, and FedEx’s freshly updated Shipping and ecommerce API, to leverage the best tools and data and ensure seamless integration.

Design

The Door-to-Door Baggage premium product was designed carefully designed to allow users to book their baggage prior to travel. We worked closely with United and FedEx on-site to architect and design the web app for multiple personas, ranging from first-timers to advanced 1K travelers. Door to Door Baggage was reviewed weekly by the United Air Lines User Experience Board (UEB), usability tested in stages prior to full development, and refined through a careful process of managing multiple decision-makers. Please see the demo of the site below:

United Airlines Door-to-Door United Airlines Door-to-Door Demo United Airlines Door-to-Door United Airlines Door-to-Door

Deliver

  • Billups Design helped United Air Lines successfully launch a very unique travel service in Door to Door Baggage. The product was launched within the 3 month deadline and we came in under budget.

Travelers who signed into united.com and went beyond the product pricing page had a very high purchase conversion rate. Site analytics, further user testing and customer service reporting showed low bounce rates and positive customer experience when planning, purchasing and checking status of their baggage shipments. The only big hurdle that remained was the pricing model, and that’s in another chapter of Door-to-Door Baggage.