On February 22nd, BusinessClass.com marked its second anniversary as the only travel search engine in the world exclusively dedicated to premium travel by unveiling its redesigned website.
The primary focus of the redesign has been on improving the flight and hotel search, but all other areas of the website have also received a facelift, including the front page, airline and hotel reviews, destination guides and news. The project has taken a year and reaffirms the premium positioning of the BusinessClass.com brand.
“BusinessClass.com was launched on 22nd February, 2021 following several years of IT development. The first two years of operation have been a fantastic journey, in particular as the world opened up again and everyone is excited to travel.” says Jason Eckhoff - CEO of BusinessClass.com, “The response to BusinessClass.com has been very encouraging with visitor numbers growing steadily. We ended 2022 on a high by welcoming 500,000 users in a single month.”
The original design for BusinessClass.com dates back to 2016 when development of the first version began. Significant investments were made in design and user experience to ensure that when BusinessClass.com launched, the flight and hotel search engine was distinct from anything online. Using videos, images and seat maps coupled with proprietary algorithms, BusinessClass.com offered a new way to find the best premium travel offers not just based on price, but also quality.
For the 2023 refresh of the website, BusinessClass.com partnered with London-based user experience (UX) experts Creative Navy. Ranked as one of the top 10 global UX design agencies, Creative Navy has worked with clients including Ford and Vodafone.
Once the bones of the new user experience were in place - focusing on the flight and hotel search that are at the heart of BusinessClass.com - Norwegian creative studio ANTI were appointed to create a new look and feel for the website.
ANTI has established itself as one of Norway's most award winning agencies with a roster of impressive international clients including Tag Heuer and Massimo Dutti.
“Our goal was to bring BusinessClass.com further into the premium segment.” says Senior Designer Vivi-Ann Slaatsveen. “The colour palette has been adjusted and expanded with new, deeper colours to help segment the flight and hotel experiences from each other. In addition to gold, black and warm beige tones, the new colour palette provides a classic, premium feel, that satisfies today’s demands for universal design.”
Over a six month period, the new version of BusinessClass.com was built step by step behind the scenes, changing almost every part of the website.
Henrik Hanevold - Chief Product Officer at BusinessClass.com shares more. “The refreshed website represents an evolution of BusinessClass.com, bringing our user experience up to 2023-standards with a look and feel that is distinctly premium.”
A key focus was to improve the mobile version of the website. 75% of user-sessions on BusinessClass.com are on mobile devices, making it pivotal that the experience is seamless. While the majority of overall users access BusinessClass.com from mobile devices, the opposite has so far been true for bookings. Mobile devices are still primarily used for searches and for reading editorial content, but research shows that people still prefer to book using the larger screen that a desktop computer provides.
“Website development is a never ending process, and although we are proud to unveil our new design, we are not resting on our laurels. We will continue to make improvements based on testing and user feedback.” concludes Henrik Hanevold.
If you would like to provide feedback on the new design, please send an email with comments and/or suggestions to: post@businessclass.com
