Graduate Hotels is a hand-crafted collection of hotels that reside in dynamic university-anchored communities across the country. As Graduate Hotels continues to evolve, they need to redesign and restructure their website into an experience that matches the portfolio; bringing to life the essence of each unique property and spaces within the Graduate Hotels collection.
As Graduate continues to acquire new properties, the new website must acquire that growth. We want to figure out what the usability issues are with the current site and how can it be redesigned to improve these issues.
How do we bring awareness to the 40+ properties of Graduate Hotel? How can we drive direct revenue on special offers, bookings of hotel stays, food & beverage, and venues and events?
The Process
To further understand the customer journey, 5 key steps were taken. What are the current obstacles that hinder consumers from booking directly through their website? To start off our research, we conducted a survey to Graduate Hotel guests and stakeholders.
Survey Data
Surveys were sent out to collect data from external audiences to better understand how guests experience Graduate Hotels and what stakeholders may know that might help the case. Some of the key Q&A's and findings below:
How has recent global events affected your business? One interesting outcome of the increase in adoption of pets during covid was that consumers are enjoying staycations more, searching for amenities and looking for pet-friendly hotels
What was your perception about the Graduate Hotels brand? People assume it's only University affiliated and only for college students
Define the biggest problem that Graduate Hotel wants to solve? Scalability, navigation, clunky website, content that doesn't articulate each property
What do most guests do during their stay? Campus visits, football game, meeting & events, experience the f&b, and city happenings
Who are the main competitors and how are they different? Other independent hotels like The Hoxton, Ace Hotel, and Standard Hotel
How would you describe Graduate guests? Parents, alumni, college athlete, healthcare traveller, event attendee, business traveller
Data Analysis & Findings
Digging deeper into the research on how each page performs, the type of audiences that visit, guest reviews, and organic traffic.
Only 20% of customers repeat book and majority of booking go though the google engine
Negative mentions from guests are quality of the stay and online booking issues for offers/deals.
Majority of visitors are students that are attending the Universities, where there are Graduate Hotels location.
Over 60% of traffic comes to the via mobile, but only 1.6% booking on mobile
The Problem Statement
Through the process, we identified that overall, users struggle to navigate between properties as the site is currently not built in support of 40+ properties. There has been a lack ofawareness with the assumption of Graduate Hotels being only one location and for just college students. The website is clunky and clutter of content gets in the way of all the actionable CTAs. That said, all this has affected the booking conversion especially when majority of the traffic is via mobile.
Heuristic Evaluation
A thorough walkthrough of the current website on both mobile and desktop was evaluated. From a technical perspective, some of the issues include; unclear CTAs, menu navigation between mobile and desktop does not match up, and its hard to get back to brand level from a property level page.
Goals & Opportunities
Increase awareness by improving the messaging of Graduate's guest experience per property
Improve the experience for visitors on popular pages, such as amenities, around town, and location with an interactive map
Personalize profiles and create a seamless booking experience for new + returning visitors
Intuitive and easier navigation between brand-level and property-level pages
User Personas & Journey
Breaking down the users by attributes, behavior, pain points, motivation, and booking behavior:
Persona 1: Special occasion visitor Persona 2: Business Traveller Persona 3: Proud parents
Brand level vs. Property level Site Map
The sitemap informed the user’s journey we designed. We simplified the brand level and property level pages and organized he main level.
Low to Mid level wireframes
We made sure to prioritize all the necessary modules that would best address the needs of the visitors throughout the website. I've also worked on a couple of iterations for the booking experience on all levels and prototyped them to test.
Design System
While working very closely with the development team, a full fledged design system was created throughout the process to ensure all styles, animation, specs, images and functionality of the final site are optimized.
Defining the digital brand story
In order to speak to a multitude of audiences, we captured the spirit of youth that customers crave.
Our creative approach of “newstalgia” speaks to opportunity for guests to explore and experience Graduate Hotels with the same gusto they had in their youth.
Inspired by all things collegiate – from letterman jackets to year books to student ID cards – Graduate Hotels’ visual identity both provides a grounded identity that is recognizable, while providing flexibility for their individual locations. The art direction focuses on vintage typography, photography that showcases each unique location, and textures and colors that are true to each location.
Revolutionary and evolutionary options were explored for the overall look and feel of the website before the Graduate team has decided on their final direction.
The Final Website
After presenting the Graduate team our evolutionary and revolutionary options of the look and feel of the website, they decided to stick true to their collegiate style and go back to closer to their original brand style.
Users can now navigate the different properties, book a room, explore what the hotel has to offer, make reservations for events and search for upcoming happenings at the hotels. These are the key items that was lacking on their current website.
