How Dtravel grew its checkout rates by 22% in 2 months
Learn how Dtravel, an industry-leading direct booking vacation rental platform, partnered with Charles to elevate its product experience - ultimately saving time for their in-house team and multiplying revenues for their hosts.
22%
checkout growth
3x
sales win increase
40h
hours saved per week
Build a design engine that
generates revenue growth.
"If you're an early-stage founder, Charles is 10x more effective at creative designs than an in-house design team. He moves fast, ships quickly, and is constantly testing new concepts for Dtravel."
Charlie Aufmann
Head of Design at Dtravel
Challenge
Dtravel needed a product design partner with expertise across the B2B and B2C ecosystem
As a vacation rental booking decentralized platform, accepting cryptocurrency and traditional payment methods, Dtravel relied heavily on their positive reputation to build customer trust.
Product design is a critical piece of building this trust - but executing it isn't simple. It's difficult to engineer designs that are attractive and understandable for varied audiences. Charlie Aufmann, Head of Design at Dtravel, also notes that it's very easy to "spend a ton of money on a designer who turns out to bring little-to-no value to the business." Fortunately, he soon found Charles.
While Dtravel already had an in-house design team, it felt time-consuming, and limited compared to what the competition was doing. Charlie had been resistant to outsourcing in the past, as too many vendors and agencies tend to provide lackluster, overpriced results. But something about Charles felt different.
So, he called up a mutual contact to see how outsourcing to the right design partner might level up Dtravel's performances. Little did he know that phone call was just the tip of the iceberg.
"With quality product design, you can turn designs into components and easily repurpose them. It's far lower risk, with a greater upside, by hiring a seasoned designer."
Solution
Because the Dtravel team are experts in B2B and B2C Crypto and eCom realms, Charlie reports that we hit the ground running from day one - no drawn-out onboarding or hand-holding required.
Since then, Dtravel has benefited from working with Charles in two major ways:
Benefit #1: Charles accelerates design concepts for busy startups
Testing your design ideas is critical to avoid wasting time and money. Yet, to create concept effectively, you need two things that startups often lack in-house: quick turnarounds and deep industry expertise. So, when Dtravel partnered with Charles, they were impressed by just how quickly we were able to strategize, conceptualize, design, test, and iterate on new design experiences and features.
Benefit #2: Charles' product design builds trust to drive conversion rates
Today, Charles's design features and experiences are high-value assets for Dtravel across various channels. Charlie emphasizes that the quality of our work far exceeds his experiences with freelancers, who never truly understood Dtravel's business or brand story.
"Charles' design knowledge is a game-changer. We would never have been able to conceptualize and test the same amount of design ideas at the same rate. So many designs would have been difficult to implement in-house with such a small timeframe."
Results
Dtravel boosted their checkout rates by 22% after deploying Charles' designs
Teaming up with Charles has not only driven checkout growth throughout the whole platform, but it also transformed Dtravel's overall sales for its hosts, offering a clean checkout experience and host interface that make them grow.
Here's a snapshot of the results we've helped them drive:
22%
checkout growth
3x
sales win increase
40h
hours saved weekly
"To this day, Charles' fingerprints are all over the designs we develop. You don't always know what style will hook which host. The acknowledgement of the not-knowing and the desire to test multiple styles is part of what makes Charles so valuable in the long run."
Build a design engine that
generates revenue growth.