Redesign Airbnb Onboarding Experience with Alibaba
In 2017, Airbnb launched a strategic product partnership with Alibaba Group, China’s internet giant. In addition to traditional growth channels such SEM or paid media, Airbnb integrated its entire onboarding experience with Alipay (an Alibaba subsidiary). The goal of the product partnership was to rapid grow Airbnb in China from Alipay’s 80M-base user pool.
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not reflect views of Airbnb.
The initial launch of product integration with Alipay was a C-suite level strategic decision. The goal was to launch fast and make a statement. The team did not have the opportunity to do thorough user research beforehand. It was common in early-stage product roll-out.
The Challenge
Establishing such as strategic partnership with Alibaba seeded a solid foundation for Airbnb to entry China market. The exposure of Airbnb on Alipay unlocked an unprecedented growth opportunity for the company. Within as short as two days of the initial launch, the product has made more than 10% of total unique visitors (UV) to Airbnb in China.
However, with huge traffics generated at the beginning, we observed that only a tiny % of the UV converted to First-time Bookers. The UV : First Time booking conversion was way lower than Airbnb’s average, including organic and all other growth channels.
Initial Diagnose
As the product owner, I did a deep dive together with the Data Science team to diagnose the root cause of the problem. First we ruled out technical issues such as connection and displaying errors. Then we looked at seasonalities, yet nothing seemed to be statistically significant.
However, while extracting the page browsing data, we noticed that users from Alipay spent less than half time on Airbnb’s homepage, compared with other channels. It posted us an initial assumption: the existing onboarding experience was not delivering the value that users expect/need.
Discovery
With initial insights gathered from data, we reached out to Alipay users whose persona match with Airbnb target audience for group interviews. According to prior research, 65% of Alipay users fall between the age group of 18 - 35, living in tier 1 and tier 2 cities in China, and travel at least once a year. They were Airbnb’s primary target market back in 2016.
We mixed the group interviewers from two baskets of users.
Alipay user, never heard of Airbnb
Alipay user, had some knowledge about Airbnb but never tried
Our goals were to explore how users navigate in the existing product onboarding experience, and understand their travel preferences, habits and challenges.
Research insights
Alipay was often used as a Saving Account.
Almost all interviewees have opened saving accounts on Alipay. Alipay granted higher interests to users than traditional banks.
Booking a trip in Alipay seems odd.
Alipay was strongly associated as a financial product, though it provided a wide of variety of functionalities such as car-hiring, e-commerce, etc. Users still found it difficult to switch to a travel mindset while using Alipay.
Airbnb provides inspirational value to Alipay users.
Alipay users found Airbnb fascinating when they first clicked the product via Alipay. They were particularly intrigued by the exotic listings, such as castles, tree houses, etc.
Travel is a must-do. Saving for travel is a daunting task.
All interviewees reported that they’d travel at least once a year. Depends where their destinations are, it normally took 2-4 months ahead of time for saving trip money.
Synthesize & Scoping
After the group interview, the team had a deeper understanding of the challenge. The mismatched contexts of two products translated directly to the users’ confusion when clicking on Airbnb in Alipay, which led to material impact on the UV : First Time Booking Conversion rate. Instead of copying and pasting the existing Airbnb onboarding experience onto our partner’s platform, we realigned on the goal of delivering an experience that match specifically to the needs of Alipay users.
… how might we graft Airbnb to Alipay users’ habitual behaviors?
Aligning with the product goal of increasing the conversion rate from UV to first time booking, based on the research insights, our high level design goals were scoped as:
Familiarizing Alipay users with Airbnb
Making the onboarding experience relevant and easy to use for Alipay users
Creating an experience for deeper engagement
Our proposal, incorporating key product value propositions of both Alipay and Airbnb, was Airbnb Travel Money Pot.
Airbnb Travel Money Pot
Airbnb Travel Money Pot is a travel money saving tool. It allows Alipay users to plan, budget, save and book trip in one seamless mobile experience.
With in as short as two-week of the launch, Airbnb Travel Money Pot has successfully attracted 10,000 users, with more than CNY 5,000,000 ($ 800,000) saved up for their next trips. The product directly increased to the UV: first-time booking conversion rate by % of 3-digit.
Product launch video by Carnivo
Save up for your dream trip
Choose a destination, enter when you’d like to travel, for how many days and the no. of people you plan to travel with, Airbnb Travel Money Pot will help you do the rest of the job - budgeting, saving and off you go.
Get closer to your dream, day by day
Already getting excited for the trip? Airbnb Travel Money Pot helps closely monitoring how much you have saved.
At day 5, you have saved up for a bed. At day 10, you have saved up for a bedroom. At day 30, you have saved up for a castle.
New to Airbnb? We got your back
Getting overwhelmed by the listings? Airbnb Travel Money Pot provides you the top listings that we think you’d like based on your trip planning (no. of days & people).
Go and book your dream Airbnb listing and you are ready to go!
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