![](/assets/images/byway-homepage/hero.png?v=260b48e0692b420aafd2311ff49c11c8)
TLDR
I used a heuristic analysis, stakeholder interviews and best practices to create a refreshed homepage design to generate conversation around Byway's brand and design direction.
Maturing a design vision
As part of the interview process and whenever I had some down-time I would concept out future visions for the Byway brand and product.
This provided conversation points and helped inspire the team with a future design direction. Unfortunately technical constraints proved too great to allow for these concepts to become reality during the time I was at Byway.
Aim
Initial conversations with internal stakeholders as well as my own heuristic analysis aligned my vision for Byway and the business expectation of having a brand that was simple, friendly, approachable and not too distant from modern travel magazines such as 'Fieldfare' 'The Maverick guide' and 'Sidetracked'. I wanted to apply some patterns found in these examples and apply them to the existing Byway brand to mature Byway's general aesthetic.
![](/assets/images/byway-homepage/before.png?v=260b48e0692b420aafd2311ff49c11c8)
New Concept
Below represents my interpretation of Byway's product, brand message and tone. I wanted to explore how to encourage certain customer behaviours in the direction that was beneficial to Byway.
In addition, I wanted to rely on the new design's cleanliness and simplicity to help instil a sense of trust in visitors towards the Byway product and service.
![](/assets/images/byway-homepage/after.png?v=260b48e0692b420aafd2311ff49c11c8)
Key Points
- Mega navigation - These are a great way to represent potentially useful information to the customer without forcing them to navigate to an entirely new page. It's also a great way to gauge customer interest on particular content and can help inform future content strategies.
- Quick form - This was implemented by Byway but in a simplified form. This allows customers who quickly get to the 'Trip builder' quickly by specifying their requiremts early and in a representation which is familiar across other travel websites.
- Social proof - Whilst the previous design had the same Trip advisor information displayed, I felt it needed to be more visually important, it's a great way to offer a form of social proof and can invoke 'FOMO' to customers, encouraging them to continue navigating throughout the site.
- Clearer messaging - I feel the previous version didn't explain what Byway was and why the customer should use them clearly enough. This new designed copy makes Byway's mission and advantage clearer to a potential customer.
- More visual imagery - Richer online content has been proven to get more engagement from visitors. I wanted to explore this by adopting more imagery across the design.
- Clearer calls to action - In the previous design, the primary button style was used in many places, from simple navigation, to booking trips and a number of others. I wanted to reduce this diversity to keep calls to action more visually identifiable and focussed.