As one of the world’s largest travel marketplaces, Booking.com connects millions of travelers with memorable experiences, a range of transport options and incredible places to stay all in one place – while enabling partners all over the world to reach a global audience and grow their businesses.
Within Booking.com, the Platform Experience team is dedicated to enhancing self-service by continuously optimizing the Partner Hub – a platform that provides accommodation partners with the commercial, editorial, and support content that empowers them to smoothly manage anything from registering their property on Booking.com to managing and growing their business.
Focused on customer-driven optimisations, Booking.com, as well as the Platform Experience team, leverage experimentation to identify the changes that bring the most impact to the partner experience.
With AB Tasty supporting these experimentation efforts on the Partner Hub, the team has built a structured approach to testing ideas, learning quickly, and turning insight into meaningful improvements.
The Opportunity: Boosting Registrations in a Mobile-First World
One of the key functions of the platform is supporting listing a property, and with close to half of Partner Hub traffic coming from mobile devices, the team prioritized A/B tests aimed at creating a seamless, intuitive path to registration on mobile.
The main KPI across these experiments was clicks to start registration, supported by engagement metrics such as scroll depth, time on page, and qualitative partner feedback.
The Experimentation Strategy
As there was no shortage of ideas, the team at Booking.com adopted a structured, data-driven approach:
- Prioritization Framework: Every experiment idea was scored on business impact, supporting data, and ease of implementation.
- Targeted Testing: Focused on both upper-funnel (awareness) and lower-funnel (conversion) content, especially the Partner Hub join page.
Before launching any test, the team also defines what action will be taken depending on the outcome — whether that’s rolling out a winner, refining an idea, or moving on entirely.
Key Experiment: Sticky CTA Drives Results
One of the team’s most successful experiments introduced a sticky call-to-action (CTA) bar on mobile devices on the “Join now” page.
The team noticed that the “Join now” page was long and content-rich. The hypothesis was that users could easily lose focus as they scrolled. To solve this, the team introduced a sticky call-to-action bar on mobile, ensuring the registration CTA remained visible as visitors scrolled.
Result: +36% increase in clicks to start registration on mobile. This significant uplift led to full rollout.
Learning from what didn’t work
Not all experiments delivered wins, but each provided actionable insights and helped validate direction.
For example, after analysing user feedback and discovering prospects wanted to learn more about the registration process, the team decided to test moving registration step information higher on the page. This did not improve conversions, helping the team to move on and develop new experiment ideas.
The impact of small details
The Platform Experience team also experimented with different call-to-action phrases.
While options like “Join now,” “Start registration,” “List your property,” and “Sign up today” sound similar, testing revealed clear differences in performance. “Start registration” consistently drove the highest engagement, while “Sign up today” reduced clicks by around 10%.
By testing even details that may appear small, the team was able to make incremental improvements that added up to meaningful gains.
Strong partnership and looking ahead
Beyond the results of experimentation, the Platform Experience team emphasized the value of strong support throughout the process.
AB Tasty partnered closely with the team, providing hands-on assistance with test setup, troubleshooting, and turning ideas into live experiments. This responsive support was crucial for maintaining momentum, especially as the team refined its processes and managed experiments across multiple languages and markets.
“It’s been really great working with AB Tasty. Everybody I’ve encountered has been really helpful, genuine, and actually deeply cares about what it is we’re trying to achieve.”
Melissa Li, Partner Hub Experimentation Lead at Booking.com
Key Takeaways:
Booking.com’s Partner Hub team has shown how focused, data-driven experimentation can meaningfully improve the partner journey and drive measurable growth.
By prioritizing high-impact tests and fostering a culture of continuous learning, they’ve delivered real results, especially on mobile.
- Data-led, business-focused experimentation fuels measurable growth.
- Mobile-first improvements, like a sticky CTA, can significantly boost conversions.
- Ongoing testing and learning are essential for digital success.
Ultimately, the team has demonstrated that by pairing a deep understanding of the partner experience with a learning mindset, it’s possible to drive meaningful impact – one strategic experiment at a time.
