Streamlining $39b in revenue for Airbnb with a single tap
A redesign of Airbnb’s mobile website provided a chance to reevaluate the booking flow, revealing inefficiencies that were bleeding sales. With the IPO impending, this was the best (and riskiest) time to redesign the engine that generated all of Airbnb’s revenue.
Full case study
I led a team to redesign Airbnb’s booking flow
Challenge
Airbnb’s booking flow was breaking down at the worst possible time
For years, it took a lot of work to book an Airbnb.
Guests had to make decisions about their trip, review home details and rules, introduce themselves to the host, and upload information for background checks...
...all while hoping someone else doesn’t book the home first (which has happened to me).
Meanwhile, the booking flow had reached a local maximum. Teams were stuck trying to squeeze small conversion gains from small incremental A/B tests.
With Airbnb’s IPO on the horizon, we needed to reconsider the assumptions, misconceptions, and debt that had accumulated in our checkout process over the last 10 years.
Approach
Redefining how all guests book all homes
Improving the checkout process at Airbnb’s global scale would require me to align six teams and C-Suite executives up to Brian Chesky.
Quickly getting up to speed
I had never designed a checkout experience when I was asked to find ways to improve Airbnb’s booking flow. To get up and running, I audited the product, reviewed past research, and recruited advisors on related teams to teach me what they knew.
Past user research studies showed frustration with the length and complexity of booking
I recruited advisors from the Booking, Payments, Growth, Marketplace Dynamics, and Trust & Safety teams to provide me with critical context
Things were worse than anyone realized
For years, six teams had been adding components to the booking flow while working in silos. Because it was a “high-intent” space, the booking process was often hijacked by teams trying to redirect user’s focus to their own goals.
MASSIVE FRICTION
Right as users were trying to pay us, we’d stop them and require more information.
UNPREDICTABLE UX
You could book five homes and get five different booking experiences depending on destination and host settings.
UNNECESSARY CONTENT
The booking flow repeated content, like price or dates, in multiple locations. Some content, like House Rules, didn’t belong on the booking flow at all.
Getting six teams aligned
I took a specific approach for building trust and alignment on a project with this many cooks in the kitchen: identify and pull in key stakeholders, share findings early, and work my way up from working teams to C-Suite executives.
My initial findings, principles, and low-fi concepts generated interest and feedback, building strong ties across teams that we’d need to later break down silos.
Three early concepts pushed the envelope
Initial ideas ranged from minor changes to big shifts from the status quo.
Concept 1: Timeline
Visualized steps to show progress through the booking flow
Concept 2: Vertical flow
Animating panels feel like a more streamlined experience
Concept 3: Iterative
Applied new styles and hierarchy to clean up existing content & flow
CONCEPT 1: ITERATIVE
Applied new styles and hierarchy to clean up existing content & flow
CONCEPT 2: TIMELINE
Visualized steps to show progress through the booking flow
CONCEPT 3: VERTICAL FLOW
Animating panels feel like a more streamlined experience
The C-suite provoked a hard-pivot
When he saw my concepts, Alex Schleifer, Airbnb’s Chief Design Officer, asked how we might push booking further. I quickly used this momentum to rally the team to think bigger.
Alex Schleifer, Airbnb’s Chief Design Officer, presenting my team’s work to the company
I pulled my advisors to become active participants in the project, coordinating their work to make sure the designs worked cohesively for the first time in years.
Back to the drawing board: With new executive support and a staffed team, we could think bigger about our approach
A data-based breakthrough
Results from a previous A/B test completely changed our product vision
An old test shaped new thinking
A past test added a pricing sheet right after the listing to immediately show cost details. As a result, traffic through the booking flow had decreased, but conversion increased. Users wanted pricing details quickly.
This made me think: Why couldn’t the pricing “preview” sheet just be the booking page?
“What if booking was a single page?”
Internally, we were accustomed to a “booking flow.” But the flow was so variable that tasks constantly surprised and disrupted users.
Instead, I came up with a single page “Hub” direction where users could instantly see the price details and work required to book.
Sheets would open up to let users complete discrete tasks, like adding passport details.
If they weren’t happy with price or requirements, they could simply find a new listing that met their needs (instead of leaving Airbnb).
A checkout system that adapts to you and your stay
Returning customers are the most valuable, but they were being forced through the same rigid flow as everyone else.
The new one-page Hub experience let us eliminate rigid steps, reducing checkout to a single tap for many returning guests.
Results
“This is going to save our IPO”
My booking flow became the gold standard at Airbnb, delivering wins that made the company eager to make other big swings. One leader stated that it would have a material impact on the IPO.
A streamlined, one-page booking experience
Reducing checkout to a single step let guests build momentum from searching a destination, to getting excited about a home, to getting that final celebratory booking confirmation.
Search
Listing
Booking
Confirmation
A tailored, high-converting experience
Instead of being a black box, components on the page now evolved to show users what was required to book the home. For many returning guests, they could now book a home with a single tap for the first time.
Major wins across the business
Conversion lift
Lifting Airbnb's $39b in revenue
$39B in bookings have gone through my booking system. The conversion lift produced 10's of millions of incremental nights booked.
Validating big bets
A 10x more successful test
The big booking redesign was 10x more successful than incremental A/B tests, giving other teams appetite to go after bigger wins
Platform parity
Consistent booking experience
For the first time in years, the booking experience matched across iOS, Android, mobile web, and desktop web, letting users switch platforms without disruption.
Brand equity
A major marketing moment
Faster checkout, and other changes, provided a product marketing opportunity to show users that we were always improving Airbnb for them
Operations
New collaboration playbook
Throughout this project, we developed methods for coordinating across teams, breaking ground for other teams to ship bigger, more impactful work together
Strategy + retention
New product possibilities
Booking a home with a single tap opened up new opportunities. With Split Stays, instead of leaving Airbnb users could quickly book two homes if a single home wasn't available for their entire stay