Our partnership with Finnair represents the true value of a long-lasting and strategic partnership, as our decade-long journey holds a multitude of success stories. In the beginning of 2016, a project was launched to completely overhaul Finnair's booking system and web services.
Taking control of the customer experience
Finnair decided to set aside old legacy systems and architecture and take its digital experience into its own hands. Every aspect of the new Finnair booking flow and website has been designed and developed from scratch, keeping the user’s needs at the core.
Our on-site team of experts have been part of the process from the start, from planning and concepting to user research, and from visual and content design to analytics and technical implementation. The team behind the service is made up of Finnair’s in-house designers and developers, and consultants from multiple vendors.
User experience redesigned
Together with the team we set out to create a customer experience that’s easier, smoother and faster than anything we’ve seen, a simple yet effective flight and ancillary booking service that will significantly boost growth in digital sales.
The project has been led by design and informed by data and metrics from the earliest prototypes. By building a completely new service of Finnair’s own, rather than relying on third party providers, the agile team can design, test, and iterate new features quickly and cost-efficiently.
Developing a future-proof service
The new Finnair.com takes shape and evolves through an ongoing service design process with qualitative user research, constant prototyping, instant validation through online tests and buy-in validation from the stakeholders.
The service uses a new enterprise content management system, and our content designers have worked closely together with the team to audit and migrate existing content as well as re-concept and design new content for the needs of the new website.
The service is built on a new microservice architecture running in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, through continuous developments and deployments by the agile team. Content is separated from the presentation and the user experience is kept smooth with Javascript applications. Global delivery is ensured with a global content delivery network (CDN), and the system is integrated into various – both Finnair’s own and global – backend systems.
The new eCommerce platform supports service performance and availability, and flexibility to create UI and services that adapt to changing business and user needs over time.
Effortlessness and fluency catalyzing the conversion
Buying flights should be effortless, which is why each step in the booking flow is designed to reduce the user’s cognitive load. Regardless of device or if the user is navigating with a screen reader or other assistive technology, the experience is seamless.
All important information is easy to take in at a glance at each step. We cut down on the legalese and industry jargon throughout the website to ensure that all the information the user needs is easy to find and understand. Comparing dates, prices and ticket options is easy, and confirming and paying for the purchase only takes a few moments with modern payment methods like Apple Pay.
The results of the new booking flow have been clear – compared to the old mobile booking flow, conversion and sales have increased dramatically, some KPIs even multiplied in comparison to the previous solution.
What’s next
The new Finnair.com is a work in progress. The next steps are creating a fully responsive web service and extending the service capabilities to be utilized across all of Finnair’s digital channels and touchpoints. Once the content migration is complete, the customer experience will be enhanced with personalized and contextual content, relevant to the user at each phase of their booking and travel.
