July 24, 2015

P&O Cruises

Brief


P&O Cruises is a leading UK provider of cruise holidays, offering cruises worldwide to 90 countries.

P&O Cruises recently re-launched its website to provide a better user experience and a more intuitive interface for its users. We were commissioned to carry out a usability testing project on the site to define and prioritise future user-focused developments.

Strategy

The main objectives of the project were to:

• Determine the overall ease of use, effectiveness and proposition of the new site and pinpoint where improvements could be made
• Gain an understanding of users’ expectations and opinions of the site
• Find out how well the site navigation supported users in the main tasks
• Determine a prioritised list of actions for ongoing work

We carried out a comprehensive usability testing project.

Execution

This consisted of lab-based testing with 12 participants (4 were existing customers, 4 were new to brand, 4 were new to cruising) to establish how easy it was for users to perform certain tasks. Eye tracking was also used during the tests to pinpoint exactly where on the site users’ were looking and for how long.

Strengths of the P&O Cruises website included the clarity of the homepage, the clear displaying of cruise prices and that images were evocative of quality destinations. However the tests also uncovered areas where the site could be improved and we then communicated analysis and recommendations to P&O Cruises based on the results of the testing.

Results

As a direct result of our work, P&O Cruises has become more user-centered in its approach to site developments. Having watched the usability testing live and seeing first-hand a number of unexpected site issues, they’re now implementing the recommendations from our usability testing report.