Keeping The Excitement Alive

In 2018, Royal Caribbean's website advertised nothing less than the best time you'd ever have on a cruise. The design language focused around adventure-packed imagery, vibrant colors that matched their tropical destinations, and bold type exclaiming the great deals available to make it all yours. That excitement stopped cold in its tracks as soon as you entered the booking funnel.

To foster a more engaging user experience, we started by transitioning the stark white backgrounds and blunt form fields into an immersive, object-oriented, selection process. What was formerly a series of forms, evolved into a cruise-themed shopping cart. We paired every option with enticing yet realistic imagery to set the stage for their upcoming escape. Our goal: show, don't tell. Customers would never again have to guess at what they were really getting for their money.

Curating Confidence

For a first-time cruiser, the endless combinations of room options and package deals make the selection process hard to get right.

To employ a sense of buying confidence in new customers, we worked with Royal Caribbean's digital team to come up with opportunities for curation and guided exploration. Wherever they could suggest the best value or match for a customer's needs, we promoted those to the top of the list, cutting decision time in half and leaving the full exploration up to the seasoned vets.

Directing Decisiveness

Big buying decisions take time, and deals come and go. To combat customers losing their place in the booking flow or backing out altogether, I designed a launchpad intended to help interested cruisers pick up where they left off.

Selections and pricing were put upfront to create transparency into what a cruiser was really getting, even if prices changed while they were away. Clear CTAs to pick up where they left off made the next steps undeniable.

Animation Credit: Eric Fuhrmann and Sean Goodwin