Trip collaboration tools
As part of the 2019 Vrbo rebrand, I helped turn a boring, outdated “favorites” feature into a fun, user-friendly trip planning tool called Trip Boards.
Feature awareness
Goal: increase awareness of new "Invite” feature
User studies revealed that Vrbo users who had at least one Trip Board were not aware they could now add collaborators.
From a business perspective, we knew that getting users to invite their friends would mean more signups and more active users on the platform.
I partnered with a PM and UX designer to create a coach mark to raise awareness of the feature. The coach mark would appear upon board creation to draw users’ attention to the “invite” button.
Impact: Increased Trip Board invites by 27.4% in Q2.
Voice & tone
Goal: elevate “invite” modal copy to match new 2019 Vrbo brand voice
The new Vrbo brand person was “everyone’s favorite aunt” – fun, easygoing, casual, but on top of her shit. We wanted to reflect this in the invite modal.
User studies told us that the trip planning phase was when people reported the highest levels of excitement – often even higher than the trip itself. We wanted to match that positive energy to help build on their excitement.
The new copy invokes the spirit of the new, more conversational brand voice and tone without changing the meaning of the message.
Impact: +8.6% increase in invites in 4 months
Empty states
Goal: encourage action with custom empty state CTAs
I was responsible for crafting the empty state content and strategy for the new voting and commenting feature in Trip Boards. I worked with a designer and PM to come up with a custom call-to-action strategy for these two empty state scenarios:
Scenario 1: No collaborators.
If no collaborators have been added to the Trip Board yet, we encourage the user to invite friends. There’s no point in voting if you’re the only person there.
Scenario 2: 1+ collaborators added
If 1 or more collaborators have been added to the Trip Board, we encourage voting.
Impact: Increased total number of users who added a guest to a Trip Board by 34% and total engagement with voting by 27%.
Push notifications
Goal: encourage collaboration by triggering an invite push
In an effort to get Trip Board creators engaged, we decided to trigger an “invite” push soon after Trip Board creation. I came up with the content strategy for this invite and wrote the copy to match our new brand voice and persona.
I used casual language, a family emoji, and a dynamic string to pull in their Trip Board name to make it feel highly personalized.
Impact: increased invites by 32% and increased collaborators by 14.7%