IIMA/MAR0493(B)

MakeMyTrip: 2013 (B): Research Design for

Redesigning the Home page
One week since the first meeting, Mr. Deepak Kumar, Chairman and Group CEO of
MakeMyTrip (MMT), called a second meeting of the homepage website redesign team for
redesigning the Home Page (see Exhibit 1 for the current Home Page)1.This team comprised
of the CBO, Analytics Head, User Experience (UX) Head, Product Head and the Tech Head
(CTO). The second meeting was called to discuss and finalise the options of the Home Page
design to be tested, the criteria to be used for choosing the best option, and the testing
methodology.

Ajay Singh (Product head):

“I have been sharing the progress made by my team in terms of conclusions of the first
meeting (See Exhibit 2). I have also shared the proposed parameters (See Exhibit 3) for
choosing the best option. Based on the discussions in the first meeting and research
findings, the major areas we felt we should focus on were the search widget, product
tabs and the Banners section. More specifically:

1. A website visitor should never be distracted from searching for a travel product on
the website. The search widget should be placed most prominently. on the
homepage.

2. Promotional content is important to expose the users to ongoing offers and cross-
selling higher ticket size products.”

1SeeMakeMyTrip: 2013 (A) for details of the first meeting, brief description of MMT, some data about industry
and additional background information.

Prepared by Abhinandan Kumar Jain, Adjunct Professor, IIM Ahmedabad with the assistance of Ms.
Kaveri Misra, Senior Manager, MakeMyTrip & ISB Alumnus. Author wishes to thank executives of
Make My Trip, especially Mr. Deep Kalra, Chairman and Group CEO, for all the assistance and help
in writing this case.
Teaching material of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad is prepared as a basis for class
discussion.Cases are not designed to present illustrations of either correct or incorrect handling of
administrative problems.
Stakeholder names have been altered. Meetings have been tailored to bring out conflicting priorities
for better learning.
© 2017 by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
1 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

“I will now share with you our thinking on the options for redesign of our Home
Page.” He then proceeded to the white board and drew the following wire frame:

“With this layout in mind, we have come up with the following 4 options for the
search widget and 2 options for the product tabs (See Exhibit 4). The search widget
performs the same function as it currently does, namely helping the customer select
the product (flights, hotels, holidays etc.), origin and destination cities and other
relevant parameters such as number of passengers or class of travel etc. The Product
tabs provide a direct path for the user to reach a particular product. These tabs
contain highly specific promotional banners based on the selected product.”

“For the first search widget option, the search widget by default will contain 3 fields:
Product selector, Departure and the Destination city. The product selector is revealed
as a pull down by default to the user that shows our different products (Flights,
Hotels, Flight+Hotel, Holidays, Bus, Rail &Cabs). However, the flight option will be
selected by default. We need to do this, i.e. select some default option as the other
two fields are dependent on this.”

Deepak:

Deepak nods involuntarily as a gesture signifying that he understood this tricky little
problem –

This need, to know the product! The two other fields Destination and Departure
cities are in a way dependent on the product. For example, if the product is a hotel
room, then there is no need for the Departure city. Also, they would need to show
fields that capture information about the star category of a hotel, which in the case of
a flight booking would be the class preference.

And, it is a problem that I would be happy to wish away. As MMT was adding more
and more products to its business, guessing wrong meant that they were not talking
the language of the user. At a subconscious level the user is bound to feel alienated
on being asked irrelevant information! If he could somehow always guess correctly,
2 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

then it would definitely be a better experience for all his users, irrespective of their
product.

“Well, you seem to have found a way to minimise this problem. Deepak smiles as the
product head turns to him.”

Ajay Continued:

“As you can see, we have minimised the amount of information that we require by
breaking this process into 2 steps. In the first step, we collect the product and
city/cities data. Once the user clicks on continue then we ask the user for more
information that is now a 100% relevant to the product. In fact, we liked this idea so
much in our internal discussions with the other teams that we have used this
technique in all of our options.”

“The second option is similar to the first option, but for one key difference. The
product selector is not revealed to the user by default. Instead, flight is the default
product. This is followed by flight related fields - Origin, Destination, Travel dates, &
number of passengers. This option is essential for us to understand to what extent
our design can influence our product mix.”

“The third option is very similar to the second option except that fields are revealed
to the user only after the information in the previous field is submitted. For example,
the user will be able to select the destination city only after entering the origin city
field. The philosophy behind this was for the experience of looking for options
(flights, hotels etc.) to be a bit more humanist. It’s almost as if a travel agent is
guiding you through the booking process, someone who is sitting across you, and is
asking ‘Where would you want to fly?’ first followed by the dates and the number of
passengers.”

Dilip Arora (UX head):

“For the fourth option, we wanted to take a completely fresh approach. The design
team wanted a very minimal look. We present only 2 fields to the user. Destination
city and the product selector with no default option. Apart from being crisp and less
cluttered, this option will give significantly more prominence to the banners and
other sections of the site. We can also experiment with an array of background image
options as this option will show a maximum percentage of the image.

“Apart from being crisp and less cluttered, this option will give more prominence to
the banners and other sections of the website.”

Vijay Chatterjee (Analytics Head):

“We are also proposing to leverage analytics to be more aggressive in terms of

reducing user input. For example, we can pre-fill the origin city based on the IP
address of the user’s computer *. [IP address Wiki-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address]. Also, based on our analysis of the
millions of bookings from our site in the past few years, we can predict the most
probable date range that the user is looking to travel in and pre-fill the same! We can
look at their history for identifying the number of users that they typically travel
along with. Imagine how delighted the user will be! For the average user, the
3 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

number of clicks required to book a ticket will be a total of just 5 clicks. Of course, the
user can change the information that have been pre-filled.”

Ajay Singh (Product head):

“Finally, across all the options the team felt that we should definitely try out
orientation variations for the product tab - horizontal and vertical. That would give
us eight options to try out. Given the significance of the product tab and the number
of clicks it receives we should make sure it is optimized.”

Manik Goyal (CBO):

“With eight options, how long do you guys think we will need to run our tests to
arrive at a statistically confident result? I am not very comfortable with anything that
might extend the trial with very little to show in terms of returns.”

Vijay Chatterjee (Analytics head):

“I agree. I think we should try and reduce the number of variations to about 4-5. We
need to keep in mind that the longer we run the A/B tests, the longer we are
exposing our users to several underperforming options. There is a real risk that some
of them might underperform our current homepage and lead to a drop in orders.”

“From what I see, I am confident that we can mix and match the search widget and
product tab orientations to reduce the options.”

Ajay Singh (Product head):

“It is important that our tests follow the rule of stickiness. A user who falls in a test
cell continues to experience the same treatment till the test ends. This is very
important to ensure that the confusion experienced by our users due to differing
versions of the homepage is kept to a minimum.”

Vijay Chatterjee (Analytics head):

“Actually, it will also be important to ensure stickiness in order to credit each option
fairly.”

Soham Agarwal (CTO):

“We can ensure this pretty easily by using cookies. Cookies are simple text files that
are stored in the user’s system by the browser that can ‘mark’ a user. Once a new
user sees a particular version of our homepage, we simply drop a cookie to tag/mark
the user with that version. This way, every subsequent visit by the same user using
the same system/browser, we can expose the user to the same version.”
4 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

He then reaches out to the whiteboard to draw this diagram:

Manik Goyal (CBO):

“Actually, extending this a little further, should we not consider exposing only our
new users to this test? That way, older users who are used to our current homepage
design can continue untouched and not be exposed to our trials. New users, on the
other hand, since they are seeing our website for the first time will not even realize
that something has changed.”

Deepak Kumar:

“The last time we changed our homepage, we got a lot of feedback from users who
were confused by the new design and wanted us to revert to the old design. No
matter how better the newer options are, there will be some users who will
experience design inertia - A sort of resistance to design changes. From our last
redesign experience, I think we should definitely give an option for users to switch to
the old design if they do not feel comfortable with the new options.”

Vijay Chatterjee (Analytics head):

“I agree. In fact, we could also measure the number of people who choose to switch
to the old design as a way to measure the effectiveness of the newer options”

Deepak Kumar:

“This has been a really productive discussion. I think we are headed in the right
direction and we should end up with some very good options for our new
homepage. Some of the items discussed today need a little more thought. Especially,
around choosing the minimal set of options and ensuring that our users are not
inconvenienced during our A/B test.”
5 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

The meeting concluded with the following decisions:

• Selecting A/B Test design to test the home page options. As the options were more
in number, it was decided to prioritise the number and sequence of options to be
tested.
• Decide on the sample size for each test to be decided on the basis of the accepted
formulae for getting results with good confidence.
• For an option to be declared the winner, it had to have superior performance on the
parameters of success.
• Agreement on the parameters to be tracked for choosing the best option and the tools
to be used for tracking them: (i) Adobe’s Omniture for Web analytics, (ii) Clicktale
for heatmap, and (iii) Inspectlet for eye tracking heatmaps.

The Product Head volunteered to send out action items and work with different
stakeholders to ensure the project was executed as per the plan.
6 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

Exhibit 1: MMT: 2013 (B):Home Page February 2013

e
Redesign
7 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

Exhibit 2: MMT 2013: Conclusions of the First Meeting:

The Purpose of MMT Website

Given the importance of the website for their business, MMT had decided the following specific
objectives regarding: site identity; search; registration, credibility and trust; and appropriate space for
all stake holders.

Site identity and mission:

The Home Page has to inform the user the purpose of this site. The Home Page also has to give an
overview of what the site has to offer and how it is organised which can otherwise be achieved only
by persistent navigation.

Search:

A website like MakeMyTrip needs to have a prominently displayed search widget on the home page.
Easy access to each product search is a mandate.

Registration, Credibility, and Trust:

Access to account login should be very visible on the Home Page. Brand claims which address the
trust factor and showcase brand credibility need to be highlighted. For some visitors, the home page
is the only chance the site gets to create a good impression.

Provide Appropriate Space for All Stakeholders:

Prominently promoted items on the home pages tend to get significantly greater traffic; It is the most
“in-demand” real estate with limited acreage. Everybody, product managers of each individual product
/ service, who have a stake in the site want a promotional element or a link to their section on the
home page, and the turf battles for home page visibility can be fierce.”

Decision Making Areas:

Overall Findings of the Pre-studies:

1. Product tabs (at the top of the page and on the widget): White tabs (top) on white background were
not getting much attention from the users. This was backed by data as we found more users using
tabs on widget rather than using tabs at the top

2. Hero Banner: Being at the center of the page, the main banner on the page called as ‘Hero
Banner’, was the premium marketing inventory getting highest attention of the user. Click-Through
Rate (total clicks received by the banner/total instances when the banner appears) on hero banner
was highest (0.6%)

3. Special Offers Section: This section also used to be very helpful for marketing. Also, studies
showed that users found these kinds of placements more informative rather than banners.

4. Side and Bottom Banners: These were the least effective banners with lowest CTR and irritated
and annoyed the visitors to the site (studies confirm this).

Conclusions from the Pre-Studies:

The above studies concluded the following:

8 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

• “The usability studies showed that the discoverability of the Make My Trip's offerings was an
issue. For some users, the web-content didn’t align with their needs and their feedback left a
big scope of improvement
• Several travel innovations in products/initiatives introduced by MMT for the first time in the
industry, needed to expand their 'Reach' to the customers
• Most of the users didn’t like the clutter on the page and expected a cleaner user interface (UI)
and better navigation. Too many ad banners were found to be pushing the products/offers.
Many calls to action (CTA) buttons across banners on a single page were also NOT
desirable.
• Instead of ad banners, prominence needed to be given to the search widget and the product
tabs to let users search for what they want. The data analysis (MMT website) and trend
across e-commerce industry shows that the Click-through rates for banner ads have fallen
over time. Users don’t tend to respond to large banner ads as compared to text ads and other
formats.
9 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

Exhibit 3: MMT:2013 (B): Proposed Parameters of Success and Their Tracking

Identifying Parameters of Success:

In order to identify the metrics for success based on which the winner can be chosen, the team
defined the key objectives of the redesign and visualised the journey of a typical user visiting MMT in
the beginning of 2013.

Besides these metrics, the new design was to be perceived by customers as: (i) that of a leading
travel brand, (ii) having improved strengths, and (iii) with reduced weaknesses.

Key Steps in the Journey of a Typical Visitor

For converting the objectives into parameters, the team reviewed the questions in the minds of
different types of visitors and activities of a typical visitor on the website. These were used to
define the parameters to be tracked. First, visitors were classified into two categories: first time
visitors and repeat visitors. They were likely to have different questions in their mind:

Common Questions A First Time Visitor Was Likely To Ask:

• What is this site? What does it offer?

• What can I do here?
• Where should I start?
• Why should I be here and not somewhere else?
• Should I come to this website again in future?
Common Questions A Repeat Visitor Was Likely To Ask:
• This site is good. I think I get what I want.
• Are there any deals/offers which interest me?
• Where can I login? I want to check my account.
• What are the things I can explore further?
• Does it personalise the experience? Where is the feedback section?
• What do they offer me? I am a loyal customer

Activities of A Typical User:

As of early 2013, the activities of a typical visitor, whether first time or repeat, were visualised as
follows:

• “…s/he came to the homepage with the intent of booking flights/hotels.

• The elements of the homepage helped in exploring other options such as Flight + Hotel
Combo and Holiday Packages.
• If past search information (about the user) is available with MMT, cross-sell products
were promoted as per user’s need. These elements inspired visitor to plan a trip in future
– especially holidays.”

The Sequence Of Activities Of The User Was Visualised As Follows:

 10 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

Figure 1: Sequence of Activities of Visitor

Impressions of
each element
Clicks Search for a
(instances of user Purchases the
received on product as per
seeing the product or drops
the element user requirement a query
banner/element)

Defining Parameters:
Visualisation of the sequence of activities helped the team define the basic parameters to be
captured for selecting the best option:

“The final option chosen should just not only be attractive to users and force them to click;
rather it should generate the curiosity of the user (let me check what this offering is, it seems
relevant to me) and encourage the user to explore the options/offerings.”

The specific parameters of success were defined as shown below. The rationale for the choice was as
follows:

• Bounce Rate on the page – to make sure that users are comfortable to the change and
there is no technical issue which users might be facing and leaving the page because of
that
• Actions which user can take on that page: All the next possible page visits from that page
(conversions) - to make sure that the new page is better in terms of (i) User engagement
and (ii) Discoverability of offerings
• Final conversion (Purchase) in the direction of above actions: to make sure that the
upside observed in the above parameter is not because of accidental clicks or to ensure
that the user exploring the elements on the page is the one who really needs that feature
and he was not able to discover the same on the control version (serious shoppers or
quality traffic)

ClickThroughRate Visit to Shopper Conversion Shopper to order/Query

Parameters Conversion:
(Clicks/Impressions)
defined (#users at listing page /#users
at landing page) (Orders/# of users at listing page)
It was also necessary to track (i) where the visitors were getting confused and (ii) understanding how
the visitors were using the website. Besides the above, information was also needed to track the
strengths and weaknesses and brand image of the site vis. a vis. the competing sites.
11 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

Exhibit 4: MMT:2013 (B):Home Page Options for Testing

Options for Search Widget:

Option 1 Search widget-

Option 2/3 Search widget

12 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

Option 4 Search widget-

Options for Product Tabs

Option 1- Product tabs placement

Option 2 Product tab placement

13 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

Exhibit 5: MMT: 2013 (B):Tools To Be Used for Tracking Parameters

1. Adobe’s Omniture for Web analytics

MMT used Adobe’s web analytics solution (then known as Omniture) for understanding the
behaviour of the visitors on the website. The tool helps visualise how visitors interacted with
MMT site. The tool also helps track shopper visits, bounce rate and orders for different
business unit and also to understand the conversion funnels. The back-end data for this is
based on several GB of data in an hour where every interaction of the visitor with MMT
website is noted.
14 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

2. Clicktale for heatmap

15 of 16 IIMA/MAR0493(B)

Clicktale’s heatmap helps understand which sections of the MMT homepage were the users
engaging with or clicking. Red color indicates higher engagement and green indicates lower
engagement. This is identified using the clicks on the page and is a great way to visualise and
understand where the users were likely to click so that design of the new homepage could
take this into account.

3. Inspectlet for Eye tracking heatmaps

Inspectlet helps analyse where visitors are looking and what parts of the site they're reading by
visualising their mouse movements. This helps to understand what visitors are looking at while
they choose to engage with select components (indicated by heatmap)