Using a product involves making decisions. And when we give users a choice, we often have a vested interest in them choosing one option over another. Because we know it’ll make their experience less complex. Because we know they’ll save time that way. Or even because it’ll improve the experience for other users.

When we confront users with these decisions, asking them a simple yes/no question will help them choose the best option.

Let me tell you how I found this out…

At BlaBlaCar, our product is a peer-to-peer ridesharing platform. We connect people who need a ride somewhere with car owners going the same way. Car owners offer a ride, co-travellers book a seat with them. Pretty simple concept.

But when car owners offer a ride, there’s a divergence in the way they might want their experience to go. Do they want co-travellers’ bookings to be approved automatically? Or do they want to choose which co-travellers they travel with, by approving or declining each booking themselves?

A seamless experience

We want our members’ travel experience to be seamless. They need to have as few interactions with our product as possible, and little to no waiting time.

So for both car owners and co-travellers, the most seamless experience is clearly to have bookings approved automatically. But in some of our markets just 1 in 4 car owners were choosing this option.

You might think, why not just remove the option to approve or decline bookings, and force “automatic approval” on everyone? But remember, our product connects people who’ve never met so they can share rides together. It’s a new concept for many people, and one we need to make them feel comfortable about. Allowing new car owners the option to choose exactly who they take in their car is a way to break down that first barrier, so there was never any question of removing it entirely.

However, we know that once a car owner has shared their car a few times and has become comfortable with the idea, automatically approving bookings will greatly smoothen their experience. So we wanted to increase the number of car owners choosing this option.

But before we could find a solution, we had to identify the cause of the problem. Why were more of our experienced car owners not choosing to automatically approve bookings?

This is the original screen-Manage booking requests? Automatic Approval? Manual Approval? What does this all mean!!

One of our hypotheses was that car owners just didn’t understand the benefits of approving automatically — this was based on two assumptions. Firstly, that they were scanning rapidly over the screen (as the majority of us do with any online product) and the content wasn’t obvious enough for them to see the advantages of choosing that option. Secondly, that they didn’t understand the question, or the answers. “Automatic Approval” and “Manual Approval” are terms we invented, terms specific to the BlaBlaCar product, and not at all intuitive.

So, we changed the question, and we changed the answers. The hypothesis was that car owners weren’t fully understanding the options in front of them, so we went for simple. Really, really simple.

This is the new screen. Now we ask car owners a simple yes/no question. And they get it.

Yes or no?

How many times a day do you ask yes/no questions? Do you want a cup of tea? Yes or no? Do I really need to come to your 3-hour strategy meeting? Yes or no? Will you proofread my Medium article? Yes or no?

We do it a lot, and we do it because it’s very precise. A yes/no question leaves very little room for misinterpretation or for a vague answer. So that’s why we decided to ask our car owners, “Automatically approve bookings? Yes or no?”

Of course this design was purely based on a hypothesis, so we AB tested it. And the results quickly gave us the proof we needed — as many as 37% more car owners were choosing to automatically approve bookings.

A better-informed decision for a better experience

This improvement happened because we asked a simple question. The simplest question. The content changes were of course accompanied by visual design changes, but the goal was the same, to simplify the screen and get the user focused on the question being asked.

Simple content always helps users use your product in the right way. And when there are two ways of using your product, simplicity can also help them make a better-informed decision, for a better experience.

Author

Paul Stairmand is Content Specialist at BlaBlaCar, the peer-to-peer ridesharing platform. He’s a designer… of words. He crafts the words for the BlaBlaCar website and mobile apps, creating the content that makes the UX design work. He believes that good content makes users understand things without knowing there was anything to understand.

This post first appeared on Medium and has been republished with author’s permission.

The post The power of simple questions- Another interesting case from BlaBlaCar appeared first on TravHQ.

At BlaBlaCar simplicity is in our blood. We spend our days designing and building a product that’s easy, that’s simple to use.

Content plays a huge part in this. In my role as Product Content Specialist, I hold a large part of the responsibility for making our website and app as simple as possible. When you use BlaBlaCar to find people to share a city-to-city car journey, we need you to understand our words and understand them straight away, with no effort.

There are many ways we do this — keeping each sentence short, sticking to one message, limiting the number of possible actions, using consistent terminology. But the thing that has really made the difference for us, is keeping it obvious.

Being obvious is about being precise, being unambiguous. But most importantly, it’s about not allowing the user to make any assumptions. If you leave them in any doubt, you can easily find them using your product in completely the wrong way.

And I know this all too well. Let me tell you the story of one of our most recent features, and what happened when we didn’t make our content obvious enough.

The feature in question is Govt. ID verification. We recently developed this feature so that BlaBlaCar members could upload an identity document, which is then verified. Their BlaBlaCar profile then shows that they’ve verified their Govt. ID, and increases their trustworthiness in the eyes of other members — an essential attribute for a user of our peer-to-peer ridesharing platform.

On our mobile app, we built a flow to allow members to upload their Govt. ID in three steps. First, we told them what types of Govt. ID they could use. Second, we showed them their name as it appears on their BlaBlaCar profile, and asked them to make sure it matched the name on their ID. Finally, we asked them to take a photo of their ID and submit it for verification. This is what it looked like:

Step 1 — Get your ID

Step 2 — Verify your name

Step 3 — Take a photo

Our users did something we never expected.

So it seems pretty simple, right? But remember, you’ve got the context. I’ve just explained to you the whole purpose of the feature and how it’s supposed to work. The first members who used this feature didn’t have that much detail. And they did something we never expected.

Take a look at the flow again — any idea where and how they went wrong?

Well, they took selfies. Photos of themselves, instead of photos of their Govt. ID, which they then submitted to us. And when you look back at the third step, you can see why. The call-to-action button was asking them to take a photo.

So they did.

By focusing too hard on giving a direct explanation of the next action the user would have to take, we left room for them to make assumptions. And the most common assumption was, “I have to take a photo now, that must mean a photo of me”. And when you consider that most users scan screens at the speed of light, especially in one-screen-one-action flows such as this, it’s hardly surprising they made this assumption.

So how did we fix the problem? Well, we simply changed the wording on the call to action of step 3 to “Upload my ID”.

Making the content more obvious made for a simpler product and a more successful user experience.

Whereas the previous “Take a photo” had led to incorrect assumptions, its replacement “Upload my ID” leaves no doubt. It may not tell the user exactly what’s going to happen next, that they’re going to be taken to a camera functionality, but that doesn’t matter. They’ll realise that when they get there. At least now, they’re in no doubt about what we need them to take a photo of.

And it worked! The number of correctly uploaded IDs increased by 140%. Making the content more obvious made for a simpler product and ultimately a more successful user experience for our members.

You’ve really got to make it obvious. Often far more obvious than you think. If you leave any room for doubt, users make assumptions, and interpret what you’re telling them based on their habits, their intuition, their initial split-second reaction. But if your content is obvious, if it can only be interpreted in one way, your users will get the best possible experience out of your product.

Author

Paul Stairmand is Content Specialist at BlaBlaCar, the peer-to-peer ridesharing platform. He’s a designer… of words. He crafts the words for the BlaBlaCar website and mobile apps, creating the content that makes the UX design work. He believes that good content makes users understand things without knowing there was anything to understand.

This post first appeared on Medium and has been republished with author’s permission.

The post Obvious content, Simple product- An interesting case from BlaBlaCar appeared first on TravHQ.

Carsharing is a trend that has recently started to pick up in India. As the challenges with public transport don’t seem to disappear and car ownership costs continue to go higher, people are looking for middle ground. BlaBlaCar, the French ridesharing company, arrived in India last year and is gaining momentum quickly by allowing travellers to connect and share a car for intercity travel. This not only allows the users to travel in comfort of a car at lower costs but also reduces congestion and underutilisation of cars.

During the recently concluded Phocuswright India, we got a chance to speak with Raghav Gupta, Country Manager, India at BlaBlaCar to know more about the scope and challenges with ridesharing in India. Here is an edited excerpt from the conversation:

What opportunities do you see for BlaBlaCar in India?

At BlaBlaCar, we are trying to make it easier for people to travel from one city to other. In India travelling in a bus or train isn’t very easy and if you have a car, the costs are high. There are millions of people who want intercity travel to be easy, convenient and cost effective and that is a very large opportunity I see.

What are the challenges in growing a ridesharing platform in India? How do you tackle them?

We enable people to share cars which is a relatively new concept in India. I think sharing as a culture comes easily to Indians and isn’t very difficult as compared to the western markets but the concept of sharing a car with people you have never met in the past is relatively new. We have been in India for a little over a year and we have seen traction build up quickly. There is a strong group of early adopters and as more people get to know about BlaBlaCar, we will see it grow even faster.

I think the main difference in adoption between the western world and India is mainly on two points. First, it is a new concept so educating people is important as they need to understand it well. Second is that people want additional layers of trust and safety. Before a user travels in someone else’s car, he or she would like to ensure that it is safe and pleasant.

To ensure that, we build a community of people through a combination of checks, ratings, technology and various other things that help boost the confidence of users and inspire them to share a ride.

What is your take on UberPool? Do you think it will help increase the adoption of services like BlaBlaCar in longer run?

UberPool allows you to travel with a stranger by sharing a taxi for local travel and from our perspective, it is a positive thing. If you share a cab for short distance today on UberPool, tomorrow you might consider using BlaBlaCar for an outstation trip, maybe from Delhi to Dehradun, because it is similar except for the fact that it is not a taxi and is someone else’s private car. So it is certainly a step that helps ridesharing in India.

What is next in pipeline for BlaBlaCar in India?

In our first year, we focussed on usage. About one million seats were offered on our platform and the most interesting part was that this happened not just in the Tier 1 cities but in smaller cities as well. We saw users from over 700 cities offering seats. We are connecting two big cities better but we are also connecting small cities through our platform. The idea is to continue building that and we are focussing on growing it multifold in future.

You can find more stories from Phocuswright India here.

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ixigo’s cab aggregation app ‘ixigo cabs’ has taken the app world by storm. Available on Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, ‘ixigo cabs’ has emerged as one of the fastest growing player in the category with over 200K app downloads in a time period of six months.

Over a short span of time, ixigo has partnered with more than 10 such app-based taxi and auto-providers across 150 cities in India. As a cab-rental aggregator, ixigo cabs helps travellers look up cabs on multiple platforms at the same time simplifying the process for travellers and allowing them to book low-priced cabs. Few popular cab-rental brands that are available in the app are Uber, Ola, Meru and Jugnoo. Interested travellers can search the cabs with details like fares, ETAs and surge pricing.

Commenting on the same, Alok Bajpai, co-founder and CEO of ixigo, stated:

“Cabs is our fastest growing category with over 200% QoQ growth without any marketing spend. We are now the clear market leaders in the cabs meta-search space, topping 1000 rides per day on app based providers and another 1000 calls per day to offline taxi companies for half-day & full-day hires. We expect to triple these numbers by March.”

One of the key reasons to the rapid growth of ixigo as a brand is the integration of ixigo cabs in two of its mobile apps viz ‘ixigo flights & hotels’ and ‘ixigo trains’. Due to this integration, it has a reach of over 8 million travellers. ixigo also launched its services on Micromax and Yu devices as an exclusive part of the ‘Around Yu’ product offering.

To expand its business network, ixigo has recently associated with many travel firms. It has partnered with BlaBlaCar for inter-city ride-sharing service and acquired Rutogo – the leading inter-city cabs aggregator of India. Elaborating on the same, Venus Dhuria, Business Head of ixigo Cabs, quoted:

“The total market size of the Indian taxi industry is approximately $9 billion. Out of this, nearly $1 billion is organized and $8 billion is still an unorganized market. There are about 2.5 million taxis across India of which around 0.6 million are in the organized intra-city space while the rest are in the unorganized space, mostly running on inter-city routes. We will deepen our partnerships with established app-based cab providers and will also work with select reputed taxi vendors and fleet owners in the inter-city market to serve our travellers who already look at cabs as an alternative to trains and buses on short and medium distance routes.”

With this year coming to an end, ixigo has outperformed many of its competitors in the travel industry. How successful will it be in the coming year is yet to be seen.

The post Ixigo Cabs leads the race with 200K downloads and 1000+ rides per day appeared first on TravHQ.

Indian cab aggregator Ola Cabs announced its new cab sharing service called Ola Share on Tuesday. On the same day Uber sent out emailers announcing UberPool, its car-pooling service. Both of them are trying to bring down the number of cars and efficiently utilise the cars that are already plying on roads. Both the services have been first introduced in the tech capital of India, Bengaluru.

UberPool operates on a very simple idea. If you choose to use UberPool, the driver might pick up more Uber users along the route. It already exists in multiple cities across the globe and is being used by large number of commuters. According to Uber, the savings can be as much as 35 percent on each trip which you decide to pool with other users. Of course the probability of someone sharing the ride is higher along a popular route and thus fetching a higher percentage of discount. To ensure safety, Uber recently added more in-app features like disguised phone numbers and Help.

Ola has taken a slightly different approach with its car-pooling service. While they are using algorithms to match users along the same route, they try to match rides with people in their social circles. Once a user books a cab, Ola will look up people from his or her circles and extended circles to match with users from common groups also looking for a cab along the route. The growth of users can be exponential with this service as with more people using it, even more will join along because they are sharing with people whom they know, or at least have a mutual connection. As an introductory offer, the service can be used by the commuters at a flat fare of INR 50.

TravHQ Take

Car-pooling is immensely popular in many countries but is yet to gain traction in India. There are many players like BlaBlaCar and Orahi trying to give the car-pooling culture a push but the progress is slow. In some countries, there are separate car-pooling lanes to motivate more people to share vehicles and reduce congestion on the roads.

With Ola Share and UberPool, the car-pooling trend might get the required push. In India, owning a vehicle is more of an emotional investment for many people than a tool for everyday needs. Security is a major concern here and with one’s own vehicle, there is more at stake for the car owner. In case of Ola Share or UberPool, that risk goes away. That said, these services still need to find their way around the regulations and ensure that there are no hiccups in service.

Among these two, we think Ola Share has got more potential because it already has a higher volume of users increasing the probability of finding other Ola users along the same route. On top of that, adding the social factor could work very well for them.

Have you tried Ola Share or UberPool yet? We would like to hear your experiences.

The post Will Ola Share & UberPool drive the car-pooling trend in India? appeared first on TravHQ.

We get to read about new startups almost everyday and while many get lost into the sea of online businesses that are coming up, some stand out of the crowd and disrupt the conventional practices. In the travel industry, Uber is redefining the taxi services, Airbnb is changing the way people stay during vacations, Vayable is changing how travellers explore and this is just the start.

Imagine travelling to a new place in a stranger’s car, staying in someone else’s apartment for your visit and taking tours with a local. Welcome to the world of peer to peer travel. This would have sounded like an alien idea only a few years back but with the increase in number of peer to peer travel platforms, the number of people travelling this way is going up.

These platforms offer unique and relatively inexpensive alternatives to mainstream travel and stay options. People lend their cars, host dinners, lead local tours and rent out homes to complete strangers and all this is set up through the internet. The scenario with P2P platforms is pretty much what eBay used to be in its early days, a marketplace for sellers and buyers. However people are offering services and experiences here instead of products.

Driving factors

A lot of factors have contributed to the sudden boost in P2P travel platforms and services. Usually these services come at a lower price as compared to the mainstream options so cost is seen as the major contributor but there are lot more elements at play here.

Now when all your trips are set up online and the providers are trying to reduce the human element, services like Vayable bring back the human connect and offer a unique experience. As people are more open to such experiences now, they get to indulge with the locals which might not be possible with a pre tailored tour package. This has become possible with the increase in number of young travellers. Many P2P platforms have got a strong reach now and with more users coming in, the choice of experiences is going up. Along with that, people can rate and post their opinion further boosting the confidence of other users in such services.

The current scenario

The P2P travel trend has got a lot of potential but it isn’t all a cakewalk. Booking a conventional holiday package would ensure that you don’t run into any surprises. With a P2P service, you might end up staying in an untidy apartment or sharing a ride with a bad driver but it will get better with more people joining the platforms and sharing their reviews.

The rise in number of young travellers has helped. Many new startups are coming up in the space but some of them fade away quickly because attracting users from a wide geography isn’t easy and still essential for the next Airbnb or BlaBlaCar to come up.

Future of P2P travel

Traditional travel players are surely scared of this new wave but P2P travel isn’t exclusive to mainstream tourism. People will still look at established travel companies for longer travel arrangements for the protection they offer. That being said, companies like Airbnb, Guesthouser, BlaBlaCar and Vayable are expected to grow at an even faster pace in the coming years. Investors are pouring in their money and some major players are expected to enter the segment as it gains traction. There are legislation issues in some regions but they are being ironed out slowly. Going forward, it is bound to grow as a popular trend. (Read: 5 upcoming travel trends in Asia)

While this segment seems to cater to leisure travellers, business travellers aren’t exactly left out. Airbnb and Uber have launched their business travel tools and announced partnership with Concur. Concur is a travel management company serving many major enterprises. Airbnb and Uber services will be integrated into their travel management tool as part of the deal. Others may follow suit as they grow.

Airbnb has recently added a new booking tool for companies as a step towards expanding its Business Travel program globally. Booking stays and filing expenses is simplified with this new tool and to encourage new users, they are giving a $50 credit to business travellers who register for the first time. You can check out airbnb.com/business for lodging for your company’s next business trip.

So on your next business trip, you might find yourself heading to a boathouse in a car you shared with another business traveller. What is your opinion on this new trend of peer to peer services?

The post How peer to peer services are changing the way we travel appeared first on TravHQ.