Fly4free.pl is a great site to keep track of latest deals for cheap flights, hotels, rides and others. It's hugely popular in Poland (nearly 600k likes on FB) and is getting attention in Europe with it's international version fly4free.com, yet the site is based on a very simple Wordpress design which is also hard to navigate for people not familiar with the site.
Here's the current look of the site:
I analyzed it looking for various UX flows and came up with plenty of them. For the record - the site's business model is based on ads which show up on the homepage and on each of its articles with deals. Here are the most serious flows in my opinion:
- the actual content 95+% of visitors look for (deals) takes only around 20% of the homepage on standard laptop screens and slightly more on larger screens. There's a lot of distractions for users - search box, big ad, users' blogs, holiday offers.
- only around 10 deals fit on the homepage and reaching even the last one requires a lot of scrolling. As the site is updated frequently (around 8-10 posts daily) users need a lot of scrolling to get the information they need.
- search box is there but is hard to notice on the first visit because of so many other calls to action- Menu doesn't provide proper navigation as it only refers people to search engine, external forum and English version of the site
- once you scroll down (which most people probably do), accessing search engines, menu or other features of the site requires scrolling back up
- mobile version looks even worse as upon scrolling only articles are visible, getting anywhere else on the site requires 5-10 seconds of scrolling and looking for appropriate options.
I started off with some sketches and then decided to base the new design on Material Design as it seemed the best way to put some order into this site and keep it very user-friendly at the same time. Here's the result:
The main ideas behind this design are as follows:
- posts are clearly displayed (2 in each row with potential of adding more on larger screens) and finding something interesting for a visitor takes significantly more time
- a 728x90 ads can be easily placed every 2-3 row of posts, not affecting much user experience and keeping the design clear and intuituve
- search box is clearly exposed on top and is visible at any time. This gives users very easy way to find content they're looking for
- content is easily sharable as share button ('udostępnij') is accessible without even opening an article (many people would probably share deals with their peers based on the headline only)
- all the areas from the site are also available at all times from the menu on the left. They're sorted by categories and can be highlighted according to business needs
And here's a simple UI design of the homepage:
Overall from my perspective - the site seems now very intuitive, with it's most common options well exposed and content easily searchable and accessible on mobile devices. Business shouldn't also suffer as the ads will still be on the homepage (just less intrusive) and this design should attract more posts' opens and consequently more ad clicks. Secondary income methods (search engines, holiday offers, currency exchange tools etc) are also very well exposed at any time, not only at specific spaces at the long homepage.
Fly4free redesign was my own personal project so I would love to hear your feedback!
