Heritage Travel
Hypothesis
Our team was formed so that we could discover how to bring family history experiences to people in places they are already engaged. One natural place to start was with travel because we know people like to travel to places their ancestors are from.
User Research Learnings
A group went out to better understand what people expected from a family history trip. They took a prototype with them that showed where their last name is from and ancestors' birth locations. Quickly, they learned that people didn't want a in-depth family history tour but rather a small family connection to a place gave travelers a stronger desire to visit those places. Tourists said they would be willing to extend their travel if they knew they had a connection to a place.
The business goal
Expand our reach by helping people connect to their ancestors through their travel experiences.
How might we introduce heritage to travel experiences?
Connecting people to their homelands through their last name
Through usability testing, we found that people considered entering their last name to find homelands was a very easy and compelling way to begin learning about their heritage. We connected with Priceline to run some email campaigns with a focus on heritage travel.
The proposed solution
Send Priceline email subscribers an invitation to discover their heritage and book a stay. Have the user's last name entered and show a map of all the places their ancestors were born and an option to click in to learn more about the ancestor. We wanted to see if a heritage connection to a place would impact their decisions.
The campaign
Through usability testing, we found that people considered entering their last name to find homelands was a very easy and compelling way to begin learning about their heritage. We connected with Priceline to run some email campaigns with a focus on heritage travel.
An unexpected issue
An unexpected issue
What didn't work?
Most users thought they were looking at living people and were confused when they saw a death date.
People didn't feel a heritage connection to places on the map and it didn't match what they already knew about their ancestry.
What did work?
People were very intrigued by the idea of visiting places their family is from and starting with a last name was a natural place to start.
The Priceline campaign was released to hundreds of people and there was a 340% increase on the number of people who clicked the call to action in the email as compared to the control groups.
Helping users make a heritage connection with surname data
Emphasize surname data, deemphasize ancestors
Showing ancestors on a map as a pin led people to believe they would be visiting living ancestors. By generalizing the ancestor data we can better communicate the data is tied to their surname rather than lots of people.
Match people's knowledge of their genealogy
Many usability participants have a general idea of where their heritage comes from. Many of them knew they had family origins in Europe somewhere. When the data we showed didn't match what they knew they found it hard to trust the data. By showing international data we can present more realistic data of the actual origins of a surname.
Going back to what's already working
Our site today has a very popular feature that allows a user to type in their surname and then it will show you the top three countries that name likely originated from based on ancestor data. We decided to follow the existing experience more closely.
Flaws in the flow
There was 118% increase for those who booked a stay with the coupon. However, not enough people copied the coupon code. Usually Pricelines' emails contain a coupon code in the email but because we wanted people to come to FamilySearch and learn about their heritage it required that we move the coupon code to another page. And that lowered the chance that a user would copy the code. Just by the nature of this flow we got results that were less than desireble for Priceline.
Next steps
Now we know a few more things about heritage travel. We know that when people learn about places their last name is likely from they are more willing to use a coupon code to book a stay somewhere. In other words, when people learn about their heritage with surname data they are more likely to spend money. But our experience doesn't really match Priceline's business goals. So we are finding another company to partner with.