Usman Akhtar | Portfolio

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Improving the uptake of flight seats on Jet2.com by 2%

Introduction

Seat selection is a key driver of ancillary revenue in the Jet2 booking path. With 17.7 million passengers flying in 2024, even small improvements at this stage have meaningful financial impact.

I led the redesign of the seat selection component on Jet2.com, focusing on three things: pricing clarity, clearer categorisation, and simplifying the UI, particularly on mobile.

The result was a 2% increase in overall seat uptake, alongside gains in both standard and extra legroom seats.

Key Facts

Audience: 17.7m passengers flew with Jet2 in 2024

Goal: Increase seat selection uptake and booking conversion by improving pricing clarity, seat categorisation, and overall usability

My role: Led UX discovery, prototyping, usability testing, and stakeholder alignment with product, commercial, and technology teams.

Outcome: A redesigned, mobile-first seat selection component that clearly communicates value and options.

Result: This meant increased overall seat uptake by 2%, increased standard seat uptake by 2% and increased extra legroom seats by 1% whilst also contributing to higher ancillary revenue without compromising the booking experience. and improved conversion rates

The Problem

Customers weren’t confidently selecting seats.

Behavioural data and user testing showed hesitation at the seat selection stage. Pricing felt unclear, seat types weren’t meaningfully grouped and on mobile especially, the UI required too much effort to interpret.

The component had been largely untouched for over a decade due to technical complexity.

It worked, though it hadn’t evolved with changing business needs. That presented a clear opportunity to improve both usability and ancillary revenue without disrupting the wider booking flow.

What We Learned

Through analytics, usability testing, and competitor analysis, three themes consistently emerged.

First, users that wanted to book seats weren’t resistant to paying but were instead faced with uncertainty. When pricing wasn’t immediately clear, people hesitated or skipped seat selection altogether.

Second, the lack of categorisation increased cognitive load. Users had to compare seats one by one instead of understanding the value tiers at a glance.

Third, mobile friction amplified both of these issues. Longer time-on-task and visible hesitation suggested we were asking users to work too hard at a key decision point.

In the end, I concluded that if we reduced uncertainty and made comparison easier, uptake would improve.

Old Seat Map

The Approach

The redesign focused on clarity over decoration.

Seats were grouped into clear categories: Standard, Up Front, and Extra Legroom to make value differences obvious. Pricing was surfaced directly within the seat map to remove ambiguity.

The UI was simplified into a mobile-first layout that prioritised legibility and speed of decision making. There were trade-offs along the way. Early concepts I ideated relied heavily on colour to distinguish seat types, which tested well but raised accessibility concerns.

We evolved this to combine colour, labels, and iconography to avoid relying on colour alone before eventually dropping colour entirely to boost visual clarity.

There was also internal hesitation about making pricing more prominent. The concern was that it might deter purchase. Testing showed the opposite; transparency built trust, and trust

increased uptake.

Early Concepts

Validation

We iterated through prototype testing before running a live A/B test, tracking seat interaction, time-on-task, and overall seat uptake.

The test delivered a statistically significant 2% increase in overall seat selection, with a 2% increase in standard seats and a 1% increase in extra legroom seats. Importantly, booking conversion was not negatively impacted.

One interesting outcome was that clearer extra legroom pricing acted as a “loss leader”, increasing standard seat selection which proved to be a useful commercial insight beyond the immediate UX win.

I led the charge on ideating potential approaches to the seats component. I began this process by sketching and then evolving to high-fidelity designs.

These designs were then constantly iterated upon over a continuous course of design reviews, usability testing, time-on-task testing, click testing and questionnaires to refine pricing clarity, navigation, visuals and categorisation. I used Figma to create prototypes and used UserZoom to enable quick feedback and constant iteration.

The key decisions lay in the three core problems facing the existing seats component; pricing clarity, categorisation and cleaning

up the UI.

One key decision was around using colour coding to distinguish between different seat categories which tested well, however in design reviews I was reminded that relying on colour alone would be an accessibility kiss of death.

Subsequent iterations combined colour and icons or abandoned the use of it entirely. Another was placing pricing on seats vs. the use of labels, both tested well however legibility for users with poorer eyesight became an issue on smaller viewports.

The business was wary about making pricing more prominent because they thought this would defer users from buying seats, however testing re-assured them that the trust gained resulted in the opposite effect and this reflected both in user testing and the live A/B test.

The approach to the seats UI was simplified too with less emphasis on “style” and more on a functional approach focussed on clarity and communication.

Impact

At Jet2’s scale, a 2% uplift represents a meaningful increase in ancillary revenue. More importantly, we improved clarity and confidence at a key moment in the journey without adding friction or overcomplicating the experience.

This project reinforced that users can be more willing to pay when confusion is minimised

Before

After

Before

After

Next Steps

The component is now being rolled out across aircraft variations, with further opportunities to refine pricing strategy, optimise mobile interactions, and extend the improvements to Jet2holidays.

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