[Design Nuances] Towards a better Small World Varun Jun 21, 2010

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It’s been almost a month since we announced the all new Small World. We’ve taken this time to get feedback from friends and family and analyze site usage. There are several small enhancements we have planned over the next couple of weeks, starting with the home page changes we put in this past Friday.

While most feedback we received was positive, one recurring complaint was that the home page didn’t do a good job of guiding a user further into the product. We looked into site usage statistics and the numbers confirmed it–despite the search bar’s prominent placement, very few people were conducting a search from the Small World home page:

Given that all the information one needs about a destination is just one search away on Small World, helping users discover this powerful feature was our top priority for the Small World home page. So, we started tweaking the layout with the goal of making the search bar more prominent. This is what we came up with:

This design tweak met our original goal of making the search bar stand out. We decided it was missing the ability to inspire people to travel and to help people discover new destinations; something the original home page had with its destination recommendations and images. We made a few more quick tweaks and came up with something that’s ever so slightly different:

Bing originally used this approach when they launched and we loved it when we saw it. We think this approach fits perfectly into the travel search context. We will be featuring five amazing destinations every week on the Small World home page from around the world. Every time you come to Small World, you’ll see a different photo and hopefully discover fantastic new destinations.

To begin with, we’ve chosen photos of five beautiful places from our top country picks for the FIFA World Cup 2010. They are:

• La Pedrera in Barcelona, Spain
• Central Station in Amsterdam, Holland
• La Boca in Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Mount Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Tower Bridge in London, England

(aside: the only reason England is included is because Stuart insisted on it. He promises they won’t choke this time around).

We want to pick the best performing design from these three options as the home page for Small World. So, instead of relying on a hunch we’re running a small experiment with all three versions to see which one performs best. We’ll run this experiment over the next couple of weeks after which we’ll pick the best performing option. We’ll share what we learned during this experiment later, stay tuned.

There are several other improvements we have planned in the coming weeks. Stay tuned and don’t forget to check out the new home page for Small World. If you have any feedback or opinions, please share them in the comments here.