Travel agency website design: the planner wizard

Some agencies rebuilt their sites around a trip finder: a few questions about the kind of trip, the region, the budget and the dates, with a button at the end. The visitor who knows only that they want Japan with their parents does not know the budget or the region in the order the wizard asks. Each screen asks for one more decision, and the way to speak to a person sits behind all of them, often in a footer menu. The visitor leaves to call an agency that shows a phone number on the first screen.

• Can a visitor reach a person, by phone or email, without answering the trip questions first?
• Is the contact link in the main menu on a phone, or only in the footer under the terms?
• Does every question in the finder accept not decided yet for region, budget or dates?
• Do the trip types match the words visitors use, such as family trip or honeymoon?

A trip finder asks questions in the order the agency's back office needs them: trip type, region, budget, dates, travelers. A visitor who has a family in mind and a rough month does not have answers in that order, and a wizard that will not move on without one stops them at the second screen. Test your own finder on a phone: count the screens between the homepage and a phone number or an email address you can reach. If the count is more than one, the wizard has become the contact page.

Check where the phone number lives on your own site. On a laptop it may sit in the header, and on a phone it may sit in a collapsed menu. The footer often carries the company address, the terms, the privacy notice and a contact form at the bottom. A visitor who wants to ask one question about a trip does not start in the footer. Check the header menu on a phone: the contact item should be visible without opening anything. Then check the contact page itself. A form that needs trip details before it accepts a question tells a worried parent that the agency does not answer questions.

Set a rule for the finder too. Every question should offer not decided yet, and a visitor who skips should still reach the planner with the answers they gave. A finder that keeps partial answers and sends them with the contact details helps the agency more than a form that discards a half-finished plan. The test shows which question the run stopped on.

Give a simulated visitor a plain task: find out whether an agency can plan a family trip to Japan and get a planner to call back. Use an invented family, an invented name and a test inbox. The run shows whether the visitor reached a phone number or email address without answering the finder, the question where they stopped, and whether a confirmation came back. It cannot judge the advice a planner would give, and it does not place a call.

Run it on a phone and then on a laptop, since the menu differs between them. Then start from a deep page, such as a Kyoto tour listing that a search might send a visitor to. A visitor who lands there may never see the homepage, so the way to a planner has to be on that page too. Keep the family and the task the same in both runs.

Landing page testing

Your site changes with the seasons: a new destination, a sale banner, a rebuilt finder. Each change can move the contact link into a collapsed menu, or add a required question before a phone number appears. After each change, run the family visitor again and check the header on a phone. Then run a visitor who wants a single city, since a finder that suits tours can make a short trip harder to request.