Philippine Airlines Website

Philippine Airlines is the flag carrier of the Philippines. It flies approximately 15 million passengers per year.

In 2018, PAL wanted to increase their online revenue by 20%. Their digital marketing team decided that improving the website can help achieve this.

Navigating organizational complexity

I joined this project mid-stream, after research was complete but before design execution. The project team needed a second designer, but within two weeks, I became the lead designer when the original designer transitioned to another project.

This created an immediate challenge: I needed to quickly build credibility with stakeholders who had already invested months in research, while also identifying gaps in the proposed approach. The research was solid, but the recommended solutions didn't account for PAL's technical constraints or organizational realities.

Key constraints I discovered:

• Legacy booking engine: The booking flow was powered by a third-party system (Amadeus) that couldn't be redesigned without significant backend work
• Marketing vs. Product tension: Marketing wanted maximum promotional real estate; Product wanted clean, conversion-focused design
• Mobile-first mandate vs. desktop revenue: 60% of traffic was mobile, but 70% of revenue came from desktop bookings
• Timeline pressure: 6-month deadline to launch before peak holiday booking season

My role became less about "designing the perfect solution" and more about navigating constraints to deliver maximum impact within organizational realities.

Philippine Airlines' homepage before the redesign

Issues

The heuristic evaluation identified several issues, most of which were related to website navigation and accessibility. These issues affected how customers discovered content.

We also analyzed and benchmarked PAL's sitemap against those of other airlines. By analyzing the sitemap, we learned that:

• Key revenue-generating content—like baggage information or seat upgrade information—were buried deep within the site.
• Content wasn't always found where customers expect to find it.
• Some pages were repeated redundantly through out the website. This was information overload for the website's users.

Philippine Airlines' sitemap before the redesign

Aligning stakeholders around constraints

The heuristic evaluation identified 20+ issues. We couldn't fix everything in 6 months, especially with the booking engine off-limits. I needed to align stakeholders around what we could realistically change and what would drive the most revenue impact.

I facilitated a prioritization workshop with Marketing, Product, and Engineering leads:

1. Mapped issues to business impact: Which issues were blocking revenue vs. just "nice to have"?
2. Assessed technical feasibility: Which fixes required backend changes vs. frontend-only?
3. Identified quick wins: What could we ship in phases to show early progress?

The strategic trade-offs we made:

• Deprioritized booking flow redesign (backend constraints) - Focused on improving discoverability of ancillary revenue (baggage, upgrades, insurance)
• Compromised on promotional real estate (Marketing's request) - Gave them Flight Promotions section but separated it from Travel Extras to reduce cognitive load
• Invested heavily in mobile IA (where users struggled most) - Accepted that desktop would get less attention despite higher revenue

This alignment process took 3 weeks but was critical. Without it, we would have designed solutions that Engineering couldn't build or Marketing wouldn't approve.

Design strategy

Given our constraints (legacy booking engine, 6-month timeline, mobile-first mandate), I focused on three strategic bets:

1. Fix information architecture - This was frontend-only, high-impact, and could be done without backend changes
2. Elevate ancillary revenue products - Baggage, upgrades, and insurance were buried but drove 20% of online revenue
3. Mobile-first execution - Even though desktop drove more revenue, mobile users were bouncing at 2x the rate

Each solution below was designed to deliver measurable impact while respecting our technical and organizational constraints.

Restructure the information architecture

In reconstructing PAL’s information architecture, we minimized redundancies—like About Us information—in both main and footer navigations.

We finalized a sitemap that focused in providing logical and intuitive paths to accomplishing user tasks.

In some cases, finding information still takes a user deeper into the site but, now, the website is structured to make it easier to locate information from the home page.

New PAL sitemap. Key actions and information are easier to find.

Make important travel information more discoverable

The new main navigation focuses on providing everything that a customer might need in a more intuitive location. Travel Information is also organized in a way that makes sense to customers. The new design provides quick access to previously underexposed self-service content.

The new website's top navigation contains virtually all information that a customer may need during their customer journey with Philippine Airlines

Place primary actions in an accessible location

Four key customer jobs-to-be-done when the user visits the website are:

• Booking a flight
• Checking in
• Managing a booking
• Checking flight status

These four key customer jobs-to-be-done are now accessible from a single location which is always visible above the fold.

In the new website design, the four key Jobs-to-be-Done (Book Flight, Check In, Manage Booking, and Flight Status) are accessible from a form that is always above the fold

Improve visibility of revenue-generating airline products

The new design puts an emphasis on purchasing extra baggage allowance, getting seat upgrades, and buying travel insurances.

At the time, these three comprised about 20% of PAL's current online revenue.

By placing these options in an area that is consistently above the fold in most devices, we hope to increase its accessibility to customers who need it.

Philippine Airlines' homepage after the redesign

Design for mobile-first

During the study, we learned that a huge percentage of customers viewed the website using their mobile phones.

The new design makes sure that the website is accessible—and beautiful —from a mobile view.

Key actions (booking a flight, checking in, etc) are within reach of the customers thumbs and provide a quick way to complete key tasks. And below these key actions are the revenue-generating content like baggage allowance, seat upgrades, and travel insurance.

Lastly, the navigation sticks to the top to provide quick access to more travel information.

The mobile version ensures key tasks are within reach of the thumb.

The Mobile Paradox: Designing for Traffic, Not Revenue

This was the hardest strategic decision: investing heavily in mobile when desktop drove most revenue. I made the case to leadership that mobile was a conversion problem, not a traffic problem.

Data showed:

• Mobile users had 2x higher bounce rate than desktop
• Mobile users who did convert had 30% lower cart abandonment (once they committed)
• Mobile traffic was growing 15% YoY; desktop was flat

The bet: Fix mobile conversion now to capture future growth. If we only optimized for today's revenue (desktop), we'd miss the shift happening in user behavior.

This required convincing stakeholders to invest in a platform that wasn't currently driving revenue. The key was reframing mobile not as "low revenue" but as "untapped potential."