Tallink Silja app makes traveling easy
Tallink is the leading cruise operator on the Baltic sea, operating 14 vessels between Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia. Their mobile application was created to support effortless mobile cruise booking as well as offering peace of mind by providing the passengers with the right information just as they need it. Additionally, it contains extra benefits for loyal customers who can use it to replace their plastic cards in Tallink’s Club One loyalty program.
During its first years, the app has already gained a lot of traction that has translated into noticeable mobile sales and increased customer satisfaction. It’s hard to put it any better than one customer in his App Store review:
"Immensely useful app. Your trips, reserved services, public transportation to and from harbour with links to service providers. You find everything here. The customer has clearly been the centre of design in this service and this is evident in the end result. Congratulations!"
During its first years, the app has already gained a lot of traction that has translated into noticeable mobile sales and increased customer satisfaction. It’s hard to put it any better than one customer in his App Store review:
"Immensely useful app. Your trips, reserved services, public transportation to and from harbour with links to service providers. You find everything here. The customer has clearly been the centre of design in this service and this is evident in the end result. Congratulations!"
450 000
cumulative app downloads |
4.5 ⭐️
average rating |
150 000
monthly active users |
Right content at the right time
Tallink app provides relevant content for the users before and during the trip. Before the trip some routes offer online check-in and digital boarding passes to avoid queuing in the terminal. While there is an ongoing trip, journey timeline always shows the current event that is happening or the info that is most useful for the user.
The content is not hidden under sub-pages. Instead the user can always access the info that is needed the most straight from the main page. During the trip the user sees all the relevant information happening onboard such as cabin info, pre-booked meals and events. |
For the most important actions, push notifications are sent to make sure users don’t miss them. For example if the users have pre-booked meals, they are reminded with the notification and info about check-in being open and disembarkation of the ship are also sent.
To make sure the user can benefit the most from Club One loyalty program, there's an easy access for the loyalty card in the app main page. |
Interactivity
The app replaces many tasks that previously required queuing in the terminal or keep small, printed items safe. Check-in can be done when ever it's most comfortable for the user and digital boarding pass is always accessible without a need to print anything. Entertainment calendar and venue details can also be found in most of the legs even before the journey has started.
If there are several customers in the booking, it's easy to share travel details and boarding passes with fellow passengers. |
Users can also edit some of the booking details in the app and this feature will be developed further during the next year to serve customer needs better.
Customers can also interact through the app by sending feedback during the journey and once it's finished. We constantly listen to the feedback given by the customers to build the app that has most requested features and the ones that help our users the most. |
Functionality
It was clear from the beginning that we want to build an adaptive service, minimising technological dependencies. Hence, a hybrid approach was chosen: majority of services are web-based and tied together by a thin native client. This way we can update the contents flexibly and keep both platforms in sync, while still utilising native capabilities and notifications and application stores as a marketing channel. We focused extensively on the seams between native and web views so the user would not need to notice when the technology changes.
There were custom javascript calls built to let the native side of the app to know when a web component has been loaded ready enough so that we can hide the native placeholder screen, for example. Also, when the services are shown inside the application we replace the web site navigation with native navigation controllers that are also correctly mapped to Android native back button to further guarantee a native-level experience throughout the application.
Special attention has been paid to ensure that we stay out of the way and provide the user with the tools that are most useful for their needs. For example, the booking service has been built so that it can be used in a web browser and only after the booking do we start communicating the benefits of installing the application. The installation links use smart deep linking enabling us to log the user in and fetch their trips automatically after the app has been installed. According to our research few things are as irritating as trying to locate booking codes from confirmation emails and copy pasting them into applications.
Another smart technical detail is related to international support. We only serve one application version to all the markets but smartly select the language and default country based on device preferences and only rarely need to ask for user input.
The biggest technical challenge was to support offline usage with web technologies. There are few network environments as challenging as a moving cruise ship, since it is not even fully offline but you often have network but it is just too slow to provide a good experience. Hence, smart caching becomes the key to great user experience.
There were custom javascript calls built to let the native side of the app to know when a web component has been loaded ready enough so that we can hide the native placeholder screen, for example. Also, when the services are shown inside the application we replace the web site navigation with native navigation controllers that are also correctly mapped to Android native back button to further guarantee a native-level experience throughout the application.
Special attention has been paid to ensure that we stay out of the way and provide the user with the tools that are most useful for their needs. For example, the booking service has been built so that it can be used in a web browser and only after the booking do we start communicating the benefits of installing the application. The installation links use smart deep linking enabling us to log the user in and fetch their trips automatically after the app has been installed. According to our research few things are as irritating as trying to locate booking codes from confirmation emails and copy pasting them into applications.
Another smart technical detail is related to international support. We only serve one application version to all the markets but smartly select the language and default country based on device preferences and only rarely need to ask for user input.
The biggest technical challenge was to support offline usage with web technologies. There are few network environments as challenging as a moving cruise ship, since it is not even fully offline but you often have network but it is just too slow to provide a good experience. Hence, smart caching becomes the key to great user experience.
Great results
The renewed Tallink mobile services have caused more than 800% increase in their mobile sales, clearly beating the effect of organic mobile growth. Further, they have managed to do it so that mobile is on average the preferred booking channel based on the post-purchase customer survey.
(This is no easy feat since according to a third party analytics company, Tallink desktop booking is already the best in class compared to international competitors.)
The information that is given to the users throughout the journey is considered very useful, scoring better than 4/5 on our on-going survey. The value of notifications is understood so well that a whopping 94% of the customers press the Allow button on the iOS notification permission dialog.
One of the highlights for the impact created was that the leading stock market analysis company Inderes published a company report on Tallink in November 2018 in preparation for Tallink’s listing in Helsinki stock exchange. In their report they specifically highlighted the application as one of the companies success factors by saying (page 17):
"The company published their renewed mobile application in 2017 and it has greatly increased the number of loyal customers and ticket sales through the app."
The happy customers echo the same story: the rating of the app is over 4.5 out of 5 on both platforms (reaching 4.9 in its native Estonia).
(This is no easy feat since according to a third party analytics company, Tallink desktop booking is already the best in class compared to international competitors.)
The information that is given to the users throughout the journey is considered very useful, scoring better than 4/5 on our on-going survey. The value of notifications is understood so well that a whopping 94% of the customers press the Allow button on the iOS notification permission dialog.
One of the highlights for the impact created was that the leading stock market analysis company Inderes published a company report on Tallink in November 2018 in preparation for Tallink’s listing in Helsinki stock exchange. In their report they specifically highlighted the application as one of the companies success factors by saying (page 17):
"The company published their renewed mobile application in 2017 and it has greatly increased the number of loyal customers and ticket sales through the app."
The happy customers echo the same story: the rating of the app is over 4.5 out of 5 on both platforms (reaching 4.9 in its native Estonia).
Happy customers
Reviews
★ ★ ★ ★ ★I was surprised how good this app is. You can see your cabin number and directions to the cabin, WiFi password etc. Also helpful on the destination!
|
★ ★ ★ ★ ★Amazing. Life is now faster
|
★ ★ ★ ★ ★The best app for traveling. Never been so happy with an app on Android
|
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Really helpful in every way and in my opinion couldn't be better. |
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Easy to use. Useful info: reminders before the trip, dinings, arrival and getting back to the ship. |
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Surprisingly good corporate app, made boarding and information so handy. |
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Makes crossing the bay super easy and comfortable. No more physical tickets for me. |
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Makes my life easier than I even dared to expect! |
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Very pretty. Nice notifications. Easy for self check-in. |
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
I was surprised how good this app is. You can see your cabin number and directions to the cabin, WiFi password etc. Also helpful on the destination! |
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Immensely useful app. Your trips, reserved services, public transportation to and from harbour with links to service providers. You find everything here. The customer has clearly been the centre of design in this service and this is evident in the end result. Congratulations! |
Team
Client
Tallink Silja Argo Ohvril, Anu-Kaisa Aalto, Triin Parmsoo, Marko Tõll, Piia Hämäläinen, Matti Viljakainen, Dimitri Koido, Helena Raud, Marko Merisavo |
Development
Tallink Silja Pavel Sorokin, Oleg Tsvetkov, Anton Komissarov, Aarne Kallas, Victor Rusakovich, Roman Rein |
Design
Qvik Matias Pietilä, Mirkka Ollikainen, Dung Nguyen, Eeva Erkko, Jani Mäkelä Trinidad Wiseman Rene Rebane, Mari-Ell Mets |
Download the application
Test account:
Username: testlaura / Password: sh1pp1ng
Note! Do not use these credentials for making actual bookings.
Contact person: [email protected]
Username: testlaura / Password: sh1pp1ng
Note! Do not use these credentials for making actual bookings.
Contact person: [email protected]