Amtrak Booking Flow
Research & Recommendations for a clearer path to purchase
UX Researcher
Travel
Context
This research was inspired by my own experience of using the Amtrak website in 2020 to book a cross-country trip from New York City to Portland, Oregon for two adults. While the trip itself has become a treasured memory, the booking process was a dilemma perhaps better off forgotten.
In the audit portion, I will be considering general comments found online about the Amtrak website. Then I will walk through a ticket-booking flow on the website and evaluate using Jakob Nielson’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.
After the audit, I performed 5 user tests alongside an interview about online travel booking. The test and interview guide are outlined, as well as the results and recommendations.
Problem:
Booking a trip through the Amtrak website can prove a difficult task, even for users who frequently use websites to book travel.
Goal:
Study the current website, as well as other travel booking sites, in order to identify areas of opportunity for improvement in the ticket booking flow.
Heuristic Audit
A Trip Through the Booking Flow
The home page of Amtrak is where the ticket search occurs, as is normal for most travel sites. Unfortunately, most content loads before the booking section, so it can seem to a user that there is no way to book tickets online. Also, the prominence of the banners above overshadows the grayed-out booking section. Heuristic #1 is Visibility of System Status. While it is good that a user can clearly see that the “Find Trains” button is in a disabled state until information is ascribed for stations and dates, the washed out colors used here make the whole section look disabled. Compare to the screenshot of the Delta homepage below, where bold colors and prominence are used to entice a user to book.
Following what I did for my own trip in 2020, I searched New York City to Portland, Oregon. Unfortunately, at the time I selected a bus station rather than a train station in Portland and pressed search. Rather than catching the error early, or only suggesting stations based on their availability to the start of the route, I received an unclear error message stating that the trip cannot be booked because the route does not exist. For many users, this would be the extent of their efforts and their business would rapidly move to another travel business. This violates Heuristic #5: Error Prevention. “Good error messages are important, but the best designs carefully prevent problems from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions, or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.” (Nielsen-Norman Group.)
It also violates Heuristic #9: Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors. In this instance, the error simply exists. The user is left alone to work through trial and error, rinse, and repeat.
When I put in the correct station for Portland, I was searching through options for a minute before noticing a quietly-presented message at the top of the page: “New boarding area in New York–Moynihan Train Hall. As someone who has frequented the Penn Station area, it’s a nightmare. To miss this message, especially if you’re running behind, is to miss your train. There is no prominence to the message, and in fact the real information is obscured behind a dropdown. This information should be highlighted clearly and openly to allow for a more relaxed experience for the departing passengers.
I selected a trip and started to book my accommodations for each leg of the journey. The first leg allowed me to select between coach and a sleeper situation. However, when choosing between a roomette and a bedroom, the price differences were not presented at all. The initial button shows “Rooms from $916” but doesn’t give the full range either. Out of curiosity, I selected a Bedroom, which I assumed was more expensive. I then selected Coach for the other two legs.
Indeed, the bedroom brought the cost up to $1,547. This could be a shocking change in price for a user–and in order to correct it, the user must start from the beginning of the booking process. There is no way to edit what has been added to your cart. This violates Heuristic #3: User control and freedom, and would lead to a pretty frustrating experience for someone who is trying to figure out their options and must start over again and again in order to learn about different costs.
The price for a bedroom isn’t shown
When I re-selected my initial trip, I tried to check out from the cart. However, the cart only gave a view of the balance due, but no way to pay it. Heuristic #4: Consistency and standards is violated here: the cart should lead to checkout. That is a user expectation at this point based on years of online shopping across thousands of websites. Additionally, it seems the site is simply broken--at the time of this audit, the Continue button did not work. Which is why back in 2020, I booked via the phone after a long hold. That being said, the user experience should not be one of perseverance, but one of ease.
Too late I had realized that I accidentally put in a return date, despite wanting a one way journey. Frustrated, I hit the “Back” button, which took me all the way back to the Home Page. Upon re-running the search, my cart had been emptied. This experience maps to Heuristic #2: Match between system and the real world. If I were to fill my cart with items in a supermarket and then return to the front of the store to look at a map to find checkout, my cart would not suddenly empty itself. And if it did, I would probably just go out the doors to find some fast food instead.
User Test & Interview
Participants
5 users participated in this test + interview
Qualifications: Have booked travel via the Internet
Ages 18+
Questions
How often do you book travel online?
Are there any trips that you’re currently looking forward to?
Can you please tell me the story of the last time you booked travel online?
Have you ever booked through an agent instead? If yes, what was that experience like?
Are there difficulties that you have when booking travel?
How did you check in for the last trip that you took? What was that experience like?
What do you look for when finding a ticket online? How do you feel once you’ve finished the booking process?
Can you describe the search process when you’re looking for travel plans online?
How do you decide on what ticket you are going to book?
Have you ever booked on Amtrak?
If yes, what was the experience like?
All 5 users had the same task: book a one-way ticket from New York City to Portland, Oregon. Only Participant 5 was successful in completing the task.
Two of the participants got frustrated with the error message presenting for Portland, Oregon’s bus station and selected Portland, Maine on accident (which is all too easy to do if you’re not paying close attention.)
The other two participants ended up selecting round-trip tickets, an error that can be attributed to the fact that the return date option didn’t vanish when they selected a one-way trip.
A Few Choice Quotes
User Test Results
Conclusions & Recommendations
Heuristic #1: Visibility of System Status. While it is good that a user can clearly see that the “Find Trains” button is in a disabled state until information is ascribed for stations and dates, the washed out colors used here make the whole section look disabled.
Heuristic #2: Match between system and the real world: the “back” button empties your cart. Going back to a previous aisle in a store does not undo what you’ve put into your cart.
Heuristic #3: User control and freedom: there is no way to edit what is in your cart, other than completely starting over.
Heuristic #4: Consistency and standards: Users cannot proceed to checkout from the cart, as is the standard for online shopping.
Heuristic #5: Error Prevention When selecting a bus station rather than a train station, I simply received an error message stating that the trip cannot be booked because the route does not exist. The error should be avoided by only suggesting end routes that connect to the departure station.
Heuristic #9: Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors. In this same instance, the error simply exists. The user is left alone to work through trial and error, rinse, and repeat.
Given the patterns that emerged throughout the research process, I created a list of recommendations for Amtrak to help enhance their booking process and reach higher conversion rates. Those changes are listed and prioritized below.
A quick review of the Heuristic Audit is below:
The user test revealed an 80% failure rate when 5 users attempted to book a one-way ticket from New York City to Portland, Oregon.
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