EF Ultimate Break Homepage Redesign
Role: Creative Direction, UI Design, Graphic Design
EF Ultimate Break sells group trips all over the world, catered to 18–35-year-olds. Prospective customers typically visit the Ultimate Break site numerous times before making a purchase; the consideration phase is long when a trip costs in the thousands, and comes with questions around travel partners, accommodations, flights, itineraries, etc.
The Ultimate Break homepage has to do a lot of heavy lifting: it introduces the brand and our core value propositions, yet must also act as a successful ecommerce tool, helping customers find and plan their trips. In addition, it should encourage trust in the product and company through social proof and testimonials. And, over 80% of Ultimate Break customers access the site on their phones.
My role was to work with creative, marketing, and technology teams to refresh the homepage to better adhere to both ecommerce and UX best practices, while drawing inspiration from on-trend Gen-Z and Millennial-focused sites. Ultimate Break is part of the EF Education First ecosystem, and uses a shared content management tool. This meant designing within the constraints of pre-existing modules, while also partnering with technology to build new components where necessary.
Before
Page length (and as a result, site load time) was a concern with the old homepage, which was nearly triple the length of the updated version.
After
Cleaned up navigation, shorter modules, and improved merchandising were big focuses of the redesign. The wishlist feature now features more prominently as well.
Hero Component
The new hero lets the user dive right into finding their trip, while taking up less vertical real estate than the old component. It also enables greater image flexibility and increased headline legibility.
Buttons
A small but important part of the redesign was a new style of button, meant to add dimension and movement. A big shoutout to product designer Allison Lenz for her partnership in identifying the use cases for our different button variants, and building an expansive and detailed component library.
Trip Tile Component
“Trip tiles” are an essential merchandising component on the Ultimate Break site, and the updated homepage trip tile is meant to spark interest through simplicity. The site has plenty of opportunities to dig deep into the specifics of an itinerary, but on the homepage, we want to quickly make customers familiar with our offering.
Wishlist Journey
Our audience is used to clicking a heart button, and elevating the wishlist to its current spot in the mobile navigation was an easy decision. Data show that wishlist behavior is a strong indicator of purchase intent, and this update makes it easier for customers to access their favorites.
Project Team
Tom Corbett (ACD, Copy)
Michelle McNeice (VP, Marketing)
Andrew Anderson (Director of Ecommerce)
& the EF Ultimate Break technology team