Onboarding at scale @Booking.com focuses on improving the onboarding process for property owners through evolutionary experimentation. The presentation discusses testing individual elements of the onboarding journey, as well as combining elements, to identify the core value and pain points. User research is key to understanding problems and testing hypotheses. The goal is to help property owners achieve their goals faster by designing an onboarding experience that guides them through setup, use of the extranet, and accessing actionable data.

1. Onboarding at scale @Booking.com
Jorden Lentze | June 2018

2. What is not onboarding.
Source: apptimize: https://apptimize.com/blog/2015/10/vevos-app-defies-user-onboarding-best-practices-heres-why/

3. What is onboarding?

4. Jorden Lentze.
● Product Owner e-Commerce Booking.com
✓ Industry Manager Conversion Google
✓ Senior Optimalisatie specialist ABN AMRO
✓ First a/b test in 2009
www.linkedin.com/in/customerdrivenoptimization

5. Today.
1. Without validation your business decisions through experimentation you cannot know
if your company is working on the right things.
2. Test everything. Also your onboarding flows.
3. With onboarding you need to look at the impact on your call centre traffic. Otherwise
you are missing an important part of the picture.
4. User research is at the heart of every great experiment.
5. “Onboarding is both the most difficult and ultimately most rewarding part of the
funnel to improve to increase a company’s growth” (source)

6. Timeline.
1996
Founded in Amsterdam

7. Winterberg

8. Winterberg

9. 2012
4,000 employees
2016
13,000+ employees
2000
8 employees
Today.
OVER
100
NATIONALITIES
2018
17,000+ employees

10. 27 million
total reported listings
43
Languages supported
198+
Offices
OVER
100
NATIONALITIES
149,000,000+
Reviews from real guests
1,550,000+
Room nights booked
every 24 hours

11. Agenda.
Source: Kleiner Perkins 2018 Internet trends: https://www.statista.com/statistics/277483/market-value-of-the-largest-internet-companies-worldwide/

12. Everything is an experiment.

13. 1.000+
concurrent tests.

14. Product Death Cycle.

15. Team focus
Homes and apartments

16. Home and apartments
● To Make Homes and Apartments Easy!
Bringing Professionalism to Vacation Rentals, solving customers and partners problems, matching more
travellers with more places to stay
● Feels like a start-up within Booking.com
We started 2 years ago and now have over 5.000.000 listing for homes and apartments.
(to compare, Airbnb has 4.500.000 listings)

17. But what is onboarding?
● User onboarding is the process of improving a person's success with a product or
service.

18. Onboarding = growth.

19. Property onboarding
Get to the value as fast as possible

20. But what is onboarding?
● User onboarding is the process of improving a partner's success with a product or service
(wikipedia).
● User onboarding is meant to deliver value by either educating, showcasing features, or driving
action. (Chargebee)
● We want to help the property owners to reach their goals faster so we can reach our goals
(Bryan Eisenberg)

21. Our team

22. Oleksandr
Kaverin
- iOS developer-
George
R.R. Martin
Springthorpe
- UX Copywriter -
Serhii Tostii
Korin
- Back End Developer-
Simona
Damian
- Jr. Product Mk Manager -
Mat-log
Swainson
- Team Lead -
&
- Client Side Developer -
Jorden
Rotterdam
Lentze
- Product Owner -
Alexi
Munoz
- UX Designer-
Annuhh
Zuiker
- Data Scientist -
Les Paul
Bodron
- UX Designer -
Jay
Rambhia
- Android Developer -

24. Our approach to onboarding
evolutionary experimentation

25. Educate

26. Timeline.
Chunking
Break the design up into single
chunks that can be tested and
optimized.
Presearch
● Data analysis
● Customer research
● Customer feedback
Research first action
What is the first thing you must do
to get to the value as soon as
possible?
Create lighthouse design
Create the final design that will
serve a lighthouse on the horizon.
Optimize for magic
Optimize for a great user
experience and get to a great
product
Test the total
Test how the elements combine
after testing the separate
elements.
Evolutionary
Design
process

27. Find the core value for your customer.

28. Where: Data analysis.
Where is the problem and how big is it?

29. Why: User feedback: surveys.
We have dedicated users researchers to help us with this.

30. Why: User feedback: talking to customers.
We started calling people who just joined us or just left us

31. New property owners without experience in renting do not know
what the first thing is they need to do: set-up their property for
getting bookings on Booking.com
Main pain point.

32. Measure value of current elements.
Do the features we already have in place add value?

33. Evolutionary design - lighthouse design hypothesis.

34. Why: User Testing.
• Usability testing in our own
usability lab
• Surveys
• Open labs
• Shadowing our colleagues in
the call center
• Asking people in the street
• Visitor recordings
• Remote user testing

35. Experiments with the biggest impact are based on thorough user research!
✓
✓

36. Testing sums of the parts.
How do you know that combining all these elements actually has the
desired effect?

37. There is more…...

38. Design the whole journey.
It is not only about showing what to do first.

39. Design and experiment
across their journey.
What is the first thing you
need to do when you start
on Booking.com?
Who is Booking.com and
what are they doing for
me?
How does our Extranet
work?

40. 1. Welcome
2. Set-up for success
3. Actionable guidance on how to use their Extranet
4. Actionable data
5. 1st experience
Welcome What to do
first
How to do this 1st
experience
New property
owner
Design and experiment across their journey.

41. Welcome.

42. Set-up.

43. Guidance.

44. None of these elements went
live the first time.

45. Other challenges.
● Testing within an extranet (partners see the changes)
● Long term metrics for short term experiments
● Runtime calculations within a closed environment
● Experimenting on a worldwide scale

46. Recap.
1. Without validation your business decisions through experimentation you cannot know
if your company is working on the right things.
2. Test everything. Also your onboarding flows.
3. With onboarding you need to look at the impact on your call centre traffic. Otherwise
you are missing an important part of the picture.
4. User research is at the heart of every great experiment.
5. “Onboarding is both the most difficult and ultimately most rewarding part of the
funnel to improve to increase a company’s growth” (source)

47. Thank you!
Jorden Lentze
https://www.linkedin.com/in/customerdrivenoptimization/