## Background: A Redesign Under Acquisition Pressure
In 2019, FlixBus — the European intercity bus platform — acquired Kamil Koç, Turkey’s largest intercity bus operator with over 6,000 employees. I joined the team shortly after as UI/UX Designer, responsible for two parallel challenges: redesigning kamilkoc.com.tr to improve commercial performance, and integrating Kamil Koç’s digital processes with FlixBus’s platform.
The project delivered a **+2% revenue increase** — significant at Kamil Koç’s transaction volume — and was recognised as **Best User Experience e-Commerce Website** at the ECHO Awards 2019.
This is a detailed account of how a structured UX redesign approach produced that outcome.
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## Step 1: Diagnosing the Problem Before Designing Solutions
Before a single wireframe was produced, I ran a comprehensive UX audit combining quantitative analytics and qualitative research. The site was functional — transactions were happening — but the data told a different story.
**Quantitative signals from analytics and heatmaps:**
– Significant drop-off at the seat selection step, with users abandoning after the seat map loaded
– Measurable cart abandonment on the payment page despite clear purchase intent
– A high volume of bookings completing via the call centre, from users who had started on the web and got confused
– Mobile conversion substantially below desktop, despite mobile representing the majority of sessions
**Qualitative signals from user research (8 interviews + usability sessions):**
– Seat selection described as “overwhelming” — too much simultaneous information with weak visual hierarchy
– Booking confirmation used travel industry terminology unfamiliar to occasional travellers
– Trust signals weak on the payment page: no visible security indicators, no clear refund policy summary
– The mobile experience described as “a tiny version of the desktop site” — not mobile-native
The diagnosis was clear: this was a conversion problem, not a traffic problem. The users were arriving. The design was losing them.
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## Phase 1: Search & Results (Months 1–2)
**Problem:** The date picker required manual text input on mobile, causing high error rates and form abandonment.
**Solution:** Replaced with a native touch date wheel. Added intelligent defaults (nearest weekend pre-selected for leisure routes).
**Problem:** Search results displayed base prices, but the checkout total was higher — a trust-destroying inconsistency that had accumulated unintentionally.
**Solution:** Enforced full price consistency throughout the funnel. The number shown on results is the number charged at checkout. In follow-up usability sessions, trust comments about pricing appeared immediately.
**Problem:** Route departure times were displayed as a flat list with no visual differentiation between time bands.
**Solution:** Introduced a visual timeline layout with colour-coded time segments (early morning, morning, afternoon, evening, night), making it scannable without reading every row.
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## Phase 2: Seat Selection — The Biggest Opportunity (Months 3–5)
The seat map was the biggest single problem and the biggest design opportunity in the entire funnel.
**Problem:** The map displayed all seats simultaneously — availability, class, and features all visible at once, with a legend that required reading before the map made sense.
**Solution:** Progressive disclosure. Default view shows only availability. Tapping a seat reveals its features. A class filter at the top narrows the map before the user even engages with it.
**Problem:** Window and aisle seat preference — one of the most common user desires — required manually scanning every row.
**Solution:** Added a single-tap filter: “Window seats only” / “Aisle seats only”. This one addition reduced seat selection time-on-task by approximately 35% in usability testing.
**Problem:** On mobile, the seat map required constant pinch-to-zoom to interact with individual seats.
**Solution:** Completely redesigned the mobile seat selection experience: swipeable coach sections, 44×44pt minimum touch targets per Apple HIG, and a “Best available” one-tap option for users who didn’t want to engage with the map at all.
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## Phase 3: Checkout & Confirmation (Months 6–8)
**Checkout changes:**
– Reduced required form fields by removing anything not legally required at booking time — additional passenger details collected post-booking
– Added an inline order summary updating in real time as users entered passenger details, keeping booking context visible throughout
– Moved trust signals (SSL indicator, booking guarantee, payment partner logos) immediately adjacent to the payment fields — not to the footer where no one reads them
– Replaced generic validation error messages (*”Invalid input”*) with specific, actionable ones (*”Please enter a valid 11-digit Turkish ID number”*)
**Confirmation changes:**
– Redesigned the confirmation screen and email to lead with the three most operationally important details: departure time, departure point, coach and seat number
– Added a one-tap “Add to Calendar” action on the confirmation screen
– Introduced a clearly separated post-booking ancillary upsell (luggage insurance, meal pre-order) with explicit opt-in framing
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## The Results
The redesigned experience launched in Q3 2019. Measured against a comparable pre-redesign baseline, controlling for seasonal traffic variation:
– **+2% revenue uplift** — significant at Kamil Koç’s transaction volume
– **Call centre contact rate** related to web booking confusion dropped measurably
– **Mobile-to-desktop conversion gap** narrowed substantially — mobile became a first-class experience, not a shrunken desktop
– **ECHO Award 2019** — Best User Experience e-Commerce Website
The “Add to Calendar” feature on the confirmation screen — half a day of design and development work — reduced a category of post-booking support contact that had been consuming call centre capacity for years. Small, well-placed interactions compound over time.
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## What Made the Difference
**Research before redesign.** Four weeks of diagnosis — analytics, heatmaps, interviews, content and flow audit — before proposing a single solution. The redesign addressed confirmed problems, not assumed ones.
**Funnel focus.** We could have started with the homepage (most visible) or the blog (most neglected). We started where the commercial loss was happening. High impact, directly measurable, easy to defend.
**Stakeholder alignment before design.** A workshop with commercial, customer service, and engineering leads before the design phase meant no surprises in reviews. Everyone had shaped the problem definition; no one was encountering the solution cold.
**Iterative usability testing.** Two rounds of unmoderated testing (Maze) and one round of moderated sessions during the seat selection phase. The window/aisle filter insight came directly from watching a user scan the seat map in a moderated session. Without that session, we’d have shipped a better-looking version of the same problem.
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## Lessons That Apply Beyond This Project
**Conversion optimisation is design work.** The biggest gains here came from structural redesign: how information was presented, how tasks were sequenced, how trust was built. That’s UX, not just A/B testing button colours.
**The call centre is a UX research instrument.** The volume and topic distribution of support contacts is one of the richest available data sources. Every category of call represents a design failure somewhere in the user journey.
**Pricing consistency is a trust mechanism.** Any gap between the price shown in search results and the price charged at checkout destroys trust at the exact moment it’s most needed. This sounds obvious — and yet it’s one of the most common issues I encounter on e-commerce and booking platforms.
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*Related reading: [UX Strategy That Sticks: Aligning Design Decisions With Business Outcomes](/blog/2026/06/16/ux-strategy-aligning-design-decisions-business-outcomes/) · [Information Architecture in UX Design](/blog/2026/06/16/information-architecture-2026-how-to-structure-digital-products-that-scale/)*
*If your e-commerce or booking platform is losing conversions you can’t fully explain, a structured UX audit is usually the fastest path to answers. [Get in touch.](https://www.gokhanmeric.com/#contact)*