Impact
- +12% checkout completion rate YoY
- $6M+ incremental revenue
- Faster iteration and lower-risk experimentation enabled through Design System–supported components
Context
Checkout is a pivotal step in turning intent into purchase. Tripadvisor Experiences powers 300,000+ products for 900M+ users, making checkout performance critical to bookings and revenue.
The Problem
The existing multi-step checkout, built on a legacy platform, introduced friction at both the user and system levels:
- High abandonment: Multi-step pages frustrated users
- Difficult corrections: Going back risked losing data
- Inconsistent UI: Legacy components created uneven experiences
- Slow iteration: Non–Design-System components made updates harder
Our goal was to simplify and modernize checkout to improve conversion and usability. This required first establishing a Design-System foundation to enable faster, safer iteration without disrupting live bookings or user trust.
My Role
I led the checkout redesign and optimisation efforts as an IC, partnering closely with Product and Engineering to shape the experience and support the Design-System replatform.
Design Strategy
To guide decisions throughout the checkout transformation, particularly when evaluating trade-offs and experiments, I anchored the work around three principles:
Reduce friction and cognitive load
Preserve trust and clarity in high-intent, commitment-driven moments, particularly around payment and booking confirmation.
Design for scalability and consistency
Design Transformation
The checkout transformation began with a replatform to Design-System–compliant components. This established a more stable foundation for faster, lower-risk iteration and long-term scalability across a revenue and trust-critical payment flow.
With this foundation in place, we revisited the existing three-step, multi-page checkout. While functional, the flow introduced unnecessary friction that made the experience feel more cumbersome than necessary.
Collectively, these limitations reduced momentum and confidence at high-intent moments, leading us to explore a simpler, single-page accordion layout.
We focused on Desktop first, where a higher share of users are signed in. This allowed us to skip the contact details step for authenticated users, directly reducing time to complete checkout and validating the new layout in a more controlled, data-rich environment.
By reducing friction and improving clarity and control, the accordion layout established a more resilient checkout foundation and set the stage for continued optimisation.
This approach was especially important in a revenue- and trust-critical flow, where clarity, error prevention, and perceived security directly influence completion.
Post-accordion Optimizations
We ran targeted optimisations to further streamline checkout and improve conversion, including the examples below.
1. In-Checkout Live Support
Challenge
Users lacked confidence around booking details, often leaving checkout to seek clarification at high-intent moments.
Change
Added Salesforce-powered live chat to product detail and checkout pages, offering real-time support at key decision points without disrupting the flow.
Impact
+0.87% conversion lift, ~3.1M annualised incremental revenue
2. Simplify “Book with Confidence” Module
Challenge
The module added cognitive load and visual clutter by explicitly calling out trust signals that users increasingly expect by default, competing with higher-impact reassurance and limiting space for future experiments.
Change
Streamlined the module to a single, high-value reassurance (24/7 global support), while giving greater prominence to live chat support.
Impact
Improved visual clarity without negatively impacting conversion or revenue, validating a simpler reassurance model.
3. Promo code placement optimization
Challenge
Placing the promo code field early in checkout introduced distraction and visual clutter at a moment where users should be focused on getting started.
Change
Tested multiple placements to balance discoverability and focus. Placements before payment and at the bottom of the payment step proved distracting ahead of a critical commitment point.
The final placement moved the promo code to the order summary, keeping it visible without interrupting checkout across desktop and mobile.
Impact
+1.71% conversion increase, +2.41% net revenue uplift, and +1.94% increase in users progressing to payment.
Brand Refresh & Value Proposition Consistency
A subsequent brand refresh required transitioning legacy checkout components to the refreshed Design System, which I supported alongside ongoing optimisation work. I ensured alignment with the existing checkout experience while proactively mitigating rollout risk and proposing alternatives where needed.
During this process, I identified inconsistencies in value proposition presentation and led efforts to standardise them, reinforcing visual consistency and trust across checkout. This work also surfaced broader patterns and opportunities to further improve the checkout experience.
Checkout UX Audit
As the accordion checkout and early optimisations shipped, I led a comprehensive UX audit to step back from incremental improvements and evaluate the checkout experience end to end.
The intent was to identify systemic opportunities to improve usability, trust, and scalability.
Audit Goals
- Align on checkout strengths, gaps, and opportunities
- Benchmark against UX best practices and leading competitor experiences
- Identify high-impact, scalable opportunities to guide future redesigns and experiments
Scope & Method
- Platforms: Desktop and Mobile
- Sample: 16 checkout experiences across direct competitors and best-in-class examples
Each flow was reviewed end-to-end using consistent evaluation criteria to ensure objective comparison.
Focus Areas
- Loading & processing feedback — perceived speed and friction
- Flow flexibility & scalability — adaptability across contexts and devices
- Trust & confidence — points of uncertainty or abandonment
Collaboration & Synthesis
I synthesised audit findings into clear themes in a shared FigJam, enabling pattern recognition and focused cross-functional discussion.
Outputs & Influence
Leadership feedback was captured directly in FigJam, aligning the team and translating audit insights into new scope that informed prioritisation and roadmap planning.
Key Outcomes
The audit surfaced high-impact optimisation opportunities, including:
- Phone number UX simplification to reduce drop-offs
- Partial loading of checkout sections to improve perceived speed
- Editable booking details to improve flexibility and trust
- Estimated rewards messaging to improve clarity and trust
What Followed
Based on these insights, we prioritised and shipped targeted optimisations focused on reducing friction, improving clarity, and reinforcing trust at critical moments in checkout.
The audit helped shift the team from isolated fixes to a more cohesive, system-level approach to improving checkout.
A deeper walkthrough of these audit-driven optimisations is available in interview settings.
Results
- Improved checkout completion and reduced friction at critical payment moments
- Enabled faster, lower-risk experimentation through Design-System-supported components
- Delivered measurable revenue impact while preserving user trust
- Established a scalable foundation for ongoing checkout optimisation
