It’s 2027, and I want to look back on what I learned last year, and reflect on something surprising: changes that feel very customer-friendly often don’t move conversion at all.
We ran a lot of experiments, some with great success, others that ultimately didn’t bring anything to the table. Our team is in charge from the guest page up to the payment, so we have a wide scope to ship different features and impact our conversion rate.
What Actually Moved the Needle
Adding New Payment Methods Always Pays Off
Payment methods are often a way to build trust with customers. I normally avoid pages with only credit card forms — they somehow feel basic and less trustworthy.
So adding more payment methods in our funnel was key, and as soon as we could, we took the chance to implement PayPal — with all the challenges that came with the development.
After a complicated development and some weeks of data, we got a great surprise: we were able to deliver a +15% increase in overall conversion and almost +20% for new customers. This was huge. Achieving this level of impact from a single feature is rare.
Following that success, we tried to move as fast as possible to implement Apple Pay. The results were similar, although the overall impact was smaller since it was only available to iOS users.
This confirmed that continuing to invest in payment flexibility was the right direction. Depending on the market, a specific payment method can be the key lever to unlock higher conversion.
Credit cards are a good starting point, but offering diverse payment options increases trust and makes the transaction easier and smoother.
Countdown Timer (Urgency)
This is where customer-friendliness and conversion optimization can diverge.
We initially wanted to improve the total time users spent in checkout. But in accommodation bookings — where you need to work with hotels, apartments, and hostels — availability is critical and can change quickly. If users take too long to decide, the room may no longer be available.
For this reason, we implemented a 10-minute countdown timer, which we identified as the optimal window for completing a successful booking.
Our goal was to improve booking success, but the results exceeded expectations:
- +5% increase in overall funnel conversion
- Improved average time spent in checkout
While urgency mechanisms can feel less customer-friendly and may create friction for some users, the data showed the opposite: clearer constraints helped users make decisions faster and more confidently.
Social Proof
We often assume users will trust us because we explain our service well or offer the lowest price. In reality, that’s no longer enough.
People are constantly validating information — through search, friends, Reddit, reviews. The question is: why not provide that validation at the exact moment it matters?
We implemented a banner showing our Trustpilot rating, highlighting a high volume of positive customer reviews, and placed it at the most critical step of the funnel (this location will differ for every product).
The result? A +12% increase in conversion.
It’s surprising how something so obvious can have such a significant impact — but only when it’s shown at the right moment.
What Flopped (The Expensive Lessons)
3DS Challenge Improvements
Here in the EU, there is a directive that requires you to validate online transactions with your phone. Every bank has a different method, like tapping “approve” or entering a code.
This window opens after the user clicks the “Book” button. What happens often is that customers close the window to check their information again, even though they already validated everything before clicking “Book.”
For this reason, we thought that adding a summary of the booking would help customers double-check their information and focus on the challenge they needed to approve.
The result? Not great. We could not validate any improvement in continuation rate. It seems customers maintained the same behaviour, leading us to believe they were already focused on the challenge and the additional information was not relevant at that step.
Price Guarantee Offer
One of our strongest selling points is the price. We work to have unbeatable prices, and that’s what we wanted to highlight.
We created a specific badge showing that if the user could find a better price than ours, we would refund 2x the difference.
This seemed like a strong value proposition, but in the end it didn’t perform as expected. We were not able to validate the hypothesis, as we didn’t see any major improvement in the funnel.
It looks like our customers are already comparing prices, so this value proposition was redundant and didn’t help improve conversion.
We even tried going further and offered a 20x refund of the difference. The result? Not much better — so we decided to roll it back.
Promo Code Limitations
In the hotel industry, pricing depends on too many factors. But there’s one rule that almost nobody wants to cross: selling below net price.
This is a constraint that limits promo codes. If you want to be competitive, you need to manage that margin as well as possible. But if on top of that you need to offer an extra discount, the value proposition isn’t very compelling for customers.
So you have two options: increase prices so you have that bandwidth, or offer very low promo codes — like 5% discounts — that aren’t very appealing to customers.
Since increasing prices is not part of our strategy, we went with the second scenario.
What did we discover? Promo codes are an incredible lead generator. People are waiting to get a deal, to find the best price available. But at the same time, they don’t want to be fooled — so the percentage matters too.
The result? A very good outcome in traffic acquisition and a terrible conversion rate.
These are the most challenging developments. You need the backing to invest where the real value is, and in that way be able to offer the best experience to customers.
Overall, 2026 was a great year — full of new developments and valuable learnings. The biggest takeaway? Trust the data, not the intuition. The features that felt like obvious wins often fell flat, while the ones that seemed risky delivered the strongest results.
WHERE CAN YOU FIND ME?
Gràcia, Barcelona 08024
