Free cancellation or rescheduling on every domestic flight booking. A promise is only worth what a traveller believes at the moment they book it.
Best Innovation Award 2023 — Flipkart Annual Awards
Role
Sole designer, alongside one product manager
Duration
Three months
Focus
Product visibility, and communicating why to opt in
Platform
Mobile and web
Outcome
21% average conversion in the initial months
The call I made
Sell flexibility as a fare tier, not an add-on. As a checkbox it competes with a price the traveller has already anchored on and loses; as a fare family it is a comparison between options, which is a decision people are willing to make.
And treat post-booking as the product rather than the marketing. A promise that is hard to redeem is worse than no promise, however well it converted at checkout.
I owned
The whole design, mobile and web
Fare presentation, post-booking and the conversion moment
I partnered on
Programme definition and pricing, with the product manager
Where the judgment was
Fare family instead of add-on
Weighting post-booking over the sell
Making the terms readable rather than compliant
CT FlexMax, in the booking flow.
About the programme
CT FlexMax grants travellers the flexibility to cancel or reschedule a domestic flight booking at no extra cost. That covers a single free cancellation, or the option to change the date or the airline. It can be used up to 24 hours before scheduled departure, and a cancellation returns a full refund minus the convenience fee.
Over three months I worked as the sole designer alongside a product manager. My focus was on elevating the product, ensuring it was actually visible, and communicating to travellers why they should opt into it — which is harder than it sounds for something abstract that you buy for a version of the future you can't picture.
What it turned on
Introducing fare families
Flexibility cannot be an add-on checkbox competing with a price the traveller has already anchored on. This initiative introduced fare families to Cleartrip, giving travellers enhanced visibility and transparency during booking. Standard carries a date change fee and a cancellation fee. CT Flex buys a free date change even when switching airlines, paying only the fare difference. CT FlexMax adds a full refund on cancellation. Presented side by side, choosing flexibility is a comparison rather than an upsell to decline.
Standard, CT Flex and CT FlexMax presented as fare tiers.
Post-booking is the product
The purchase is a promise; the redemption is the product. The primary focus was on post-booking — specifically the travellers who arrive wanting to cancel or reschedule based on their own convenience and preferred dates. A key objective was to ensure the full functionality of those post-booking processes, so modifying a plan is seamless rather than a support fight over something already paid for.
Converting the charged user
Introducing a feature often poses a challenge for people to grasp, especially when they are prioritising cost savings and hesitant to invest in a premium option. Asking someone to pay more at the last step is the hardest ask in a booking flow, so the work was in the framing, the wording and the placement of that moment — and in making the terms readable rather than buried.
The terms, written to be read.
Outcome
21%Average conversion rate in the initial months
2023Best Innovation Award, Flipkart Annual Awards
Happy to walk through the parts that didn't work, too.
