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Web & App Update - Preparing Customers for the Southwest Experience

MarkHursh
Employee
Employee

During the pandemic we've been lucky enough to have many new Customers buy tickets with us who may be unfamiliar with the quirky and fun Southwest expeience.  And we LUV having you on board!  We also love to make sure everyone is familiar with our industry leading policies like Two Bags Fly Free(1), No Change or Cancel Fees(2) , and our free onboard services like Free iMessage & WhatsApp(3) and Free Movies, Live TV, and TV Series on Demand(3).    Also, some may not know our different way of boarding with our highly efficient Open Seating policy where you can choose your seat.

 

Important legal stuff so my friend Meredith in General Counsel stays happy

1 First and second checked bags. Size and weight limits apply

2 If you need to change an upcoming flight itinerary, you’ll only pay the cost in fare difference. Failure to cancel a reservation at least 10 minutes prior to departure may result in forfeited Travel Funds

3 Available only on WiFi-enabled aircraft. Limited-time offer. Where available. Must have messaging apps downloaded before connecting to WiFi network onboard

 

As such we've been working as a team internally on a program called Dominate the Day to improve your day of travel experience.  We do that by offering timely information in more contextual areas about your trip.   

 

You've likely seen that through special messaging we've been adding when shopping if your destination was impacted by a travel restriction.  As we've continued to evolve in this area we've added two new capabilities to help travel readiness for our Customers.

 

New Customer Landing Page

We optimized and simplified our Flying with Southwest page and have now placed this great new overview page in even more locations.  It shares all the things to know when flying with us.    

 

And people are really engaging with the content.  Since we launched in April we've seen nearly 1.6 million unique visitors to this newly optimized page.  We've also seen it utilized more than 2,000% more than the prior page.  

 

We hope this makes it even easier and more fun to travel with us.

 

New Customer Landing Page.png

 

App Day of Travel Readiness Messaging

We hypothesize that providing more relevant information about what to expect closer to your trip details could improve your day of travel experience.  As such, our Self Service Digital Products team experimented a bit and studied new ways to surface information about our flexible baggage policy, what to expect while traveling during the pandemic, and also details on our unique boarding process.  In usability Customers loved having this information so we we moved on to making changes to the app experience.

 

We added new logic to better identify Customers in the app with upcoming trips and provide more timely information.  And wow, our testing proved that people really valued this content.  We saw a nearly 400% increases in bag policy information engagement with these new placements.  So we're going to keep them on fully steam and we're going to use these new areas to provide more information in the future for audiences such as families or those requesting wheelchair assistance.  All to help improve your day of travel experience.

 

You can see this experience if you have an upcoming trip linked to your Rapid Rewards account and you are logged in on the app.

 

 Dominate the Day.png

 

 

Special thanks to so many Cohearts that helped with this including:

Cindi, Katie, Nick, Lindsey, Ashley, Gloria, Tony, McGuinn, Jennifer, Chris, Roxanna, Corey, Jordan, Sydney, Anna, AmberRam, Michael, Laura, Tony, Pence, Andrew, Nic, Jordan, Aaron, Sally,  

You can learn about other recent improvements to our digital experiences here.