Shipped a website transformation for a NASDAQ-listed expedition cruise company against an 18-month roadmap, delivering +15% conversion, +8% AOV, and a 67% drop in customer-service contacts.
Lindblad Expeditions is a NASDAQ-listed luxury expedition cruise company operating across 24 global destinations: Antarctica, the Galápagos, the Arctic, Alaska. Trips range from 7 to 31 days, led by National Geographic experts.
Despite a premium product, the digital experience was not transactional:
Behind the 10,000 pages and phone-only booking sat the real reason users dropped off. Decision paralysis wasn't caused by missing information. It was caused by missing structure: no way to compare itineraries, weigh cabin choices, or evaluate logistics across complex, multi-destination trips.
The brand expression compounded the issue. The digital experience didn't reflect the premium of the product, the exhilaration of discovery, or the lifelong friendships and memories the trips actually built, leaving users to evaluate a high-value purchase against a site that read as inventory, not experience.
Led end-to-end product development for a two-year engagement in New York, spanning discovery, strategy, definition, and delivery, aligning executive stakeholders, synthesising customer research across multiple markets, and collaborating with engineering to ship the platform.
Every cohort, mapped against the same six phases (awareness, consideration, book, post-purchase, expedition, retention) and crossed with the internal teams touching each one.
Removing clicks doesn't help when a guest can't tell whether the Galápagos in March is right for them, whether the cabin is worth the upgrade, or whether they'll be stuck on a flight without a transfer. Confidence had to come before conversion. The work re-pointed itself: build decision support, not funnel progression.
Replaced 10,000+ pages with structure around destination, duration, and intent. Six cohorts could now filter on the axes that mattered to them.
Tackled decision paralysis by enabling like-for-like evaluation of itineraries, day-by-day, side by side.
Removed phone-call dependency on cabin pricing by surfacing every option and price upfront.
Addressed the international cohort's biggest blocker: flights, transfers, and extensions surfaced in the same flow as the booking.
Closed the loop. Self-serve booking with optional human support.
Legacy system constraint
Complexity vs. impact
Low early ROI vs. scope
Built against a 6-engineer team, 2-week sprints, inside an 18-month delivery window.
In partnership with the engineering team at Matter Of Form.
Two-thirds fewer support contacts. Guests were finding answers in the product (comparing itineraries, choosing cabins, planning logistics) without picking up the phone.
→ Confidence had moved upstream.
Source: Lindblad reservations & CS data, 2021—22
Running through the same surfaces phone-led conversations used to.
Logistics, extensions, cabin upgrades: surfaced in the product, not sold over the phone.