Alaska Airlines
Homepage
product design / UI / content strategy
Over the 5 years I worked at Alaska, I contributed several iterations of the homepage. From simple component updates to complete redesigns, I have spent countless hours designing ways to improve the experience of Alaska Airlines’ front door.
Homepage over the years
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2018
This version of the homepage was designed and launched in 2016, along with Alaska’s new brand.
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2019
In January of 2019, the request came in for a brand new homepage to launch with our new brand during the Oscar’s telecast - next month. That gave me less than a month to design and launch a new homepage.
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2020
Covid brought several more subtle changes to the information displayed on the homepage. Many changes were based on important information needed to be communicated to our guests.
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2021
There was again the ask to redesign the homepage. Using our new design system and brand language, we worked on creating a more modern experience that would enhance personalization and strengthen brand trust.
2019 Redesign
The request for an updated homepage in January of 2019 came quickly and with not much lead time. It was a marketing request as we were about to roll out a new brand campaign and wanted a homepage that reflected that updated look and messaging.
The homepage had not had any major updates since 2016, so it was time for a new experience, though I had been hoping for more time (the final timeline ended up being around 3 weeks from request to rollout).
The result was an experience that we had deemed “temporary”. Something that was a good foundation but would need more updating in the near future. One of the more successful things about this iteration was the flexibility it allowed for marketing, and the focus on flight search.
2020 Covid updates
The onset of the 2020 Covid pandemic was a particularly difficult time for the airline industry, and anyone who was trying to travel. User behavior had shifted greatly, and guests expectations were based on use cases that were normally deemed “edge cases”.
One of the things that became very clear was that the way we presented information to guests could have serious impacts on our call center and the volumes they had to deal with. Presenting relevant information at the right time became even more imperative, and it became the main focus as we went through our Covid response phase.
2021 Redesign
My team was once again approached to design a new homepage experience. The motivation was another brand launch from marketing, which meant pushing for a quicker timeline again.
Having been through this effort before I immediately asked for more time. I knew that in order to actually improve our homepage we needed to do a lot more foundational research to understand what was currently working and what was not.
While the page that ended up being designed was never implemented, I was proud of the work our UI designer and I had done to elevate our flight search, align with our design system and create a feasible and very much improved homepage experience.
The final concept focuses on a new horizontal flight search that adopts all of our new components from our design system. It simplifies the search process while allowing for advanced search options that would drop down in the same view.
The rest of the page gives new life to merchandising of Alaska’s products and provides several options for marketing to add whatever they need.
Overall it’s an incredible improvement for guests and internal users alike, providing options for better merchandising and setting it up for more personalization options in the future.
The future
Personalization
I created initial planning around a new login experience for Alaska guests that would allow them to login and stay on their current page. For the homepage, that would mean prime opportunities to personalize information based on their past and future trips, searches, and saved preferences.
It would also require an updated and more personalized header. Adding quick links to all of the known user actions would engage users to plan for future trips and explore the perks of their Mileage Plan, promoting further engagement in earning and using their miles.