Whether you’ve used it to actually book a vacation or just daydream about a trip that you never actually took, you’ve probably played with Expedia’s travel search tool at some point.
Well after a few big changes this past week, that tool is looking a lot different. Expedia’s Canadian website got a full makeover to a new mobile-friendly responsive design. And today, Expedia released a new tablet app for iOS and Android. The new search tool combines hotels and flights into one set of results and you can also browse vacation packages by theme. We were joined by John Kim for this Hangouts on Air interview in which he discussed how Expedia made the business decisions that led to the new web and tablet app products.
Watch the interview to hear Kim’s responses to these questions:
- Why does Expedia need both a mobile-friendly website and a tablet app?
- I notice the website puts content about travel at the forefront while the app puts the search and browsing tools for trip packages at the front. Why is that?
- What have you learned about how people use Expedia from monitoring analytics on your site?
- How have you applied those insights to these redesigns?
- Your CEO has described Expedia as a travel data platform. Why is thinking about the company in that way important, as opposed to just calling it a web service?
- What are the different customer touch points that you’re thinking about and how do you pave the path for the journey you want your customers to follow?