Quotes is a B2B2C feature in RateHawk. It helps travel agents compile hotel offers and additional services in one place and share them with clients.
It's not a core product feature, so it has significantly lower usage compared to bookings. But both the product team and investors saw potential in Quotes to increase partner retention — so we allocated resources to a dedicated product stream focused on reviving the feature.
We were working within a defended six-month strategy, which created strict limitations in terms of timelines and scope.
The primary users are travel agents who work with RateHawk as B2B clients.
They create Quotes with hotel offers and send them to their clients to speed up the accommodation approval process. Without Quotes, agents have to manually copy hotel information and discuss everything in messengers.
We received two user requests:
- Enable branding in Quotes to match the agent's or the agency's visual identity
- Improve the PDF version, including the ability to change or remove the cover page
Based on an additional User Hour study, we identified another issue: the current settings were overloaded and confusing, making them hard for agents to use.
Within this task, we addressed all three problem areas.
From a business perspective
Quotes influence two metrics — Retention Rate, since they're one of the reasons partners return, and FNBC (Forecast Net Booked Commission), because Quotes can directly lead to bookings.
Our goal wasn't to improve these metrics directly, but to track a related one — the share of active partners who use Quotes.
From a product perspective
- Add the customization feature users requested
- Reduce cognitive load
- Improve the overall visual design
Before I joined, the research team conducted several in-depth UX interviews, which formed the foundation behind the six-month strategy.
To refine the details, the product manager and I ran an additional User Hour session. We showed agents the existing settings sheet and learned that they barely changed the key settings, spent the most time editing the "business card" info, and found the settings interface confusing.
After gathering the insights, I created a draft design of the future page that included all changes planned for the next six months. Then, together with the product manager, we selected the part of the scope that could realistically be delivered within the Customization task.
The final design included
- An updated header
- Splitting settings into two independent sections
- A new Customization sheet
- An expanded "business card" for branding
I created the final mockups, prepared the mobile version, structured the page into logical blocks, and worked with editors to enhance the English and Russian versions for following localization.
We didn't need usability testing for the prototypes since the changes didn't affect a critical flow — but we launched an A/B test in production and evaluated the results afterward.
1 · Splitting settings into two logical blocks
We separated the Quotes settings into their own sheet, removed unnecessary text, and refined components. The redesigned "business card" is now filled out in a separate sheet — and beyond the original fields, agents can now upload a profile photo, a logo, and a website link.
The comment field was moved to the view level, so agents wouldn't have to open the business-card settings every time.
2 · New header and extended customization
The most significant change affected the visual appearance of the Quotes page. We added a visual header — a cover (chosen from presets or uploaded), a visually enlarged title, and primary action buttons (preview, download, copy link). This gave every Quote a visual anchor and made even an empty Quote look more expressive.
In the customization settings, we also added the ability to change the color of primary buttons to match the agent's branding, and to upload or choose a PDF cover — or disable it completely.
We considered adding an instant preview mode directly on the page, but it would have significantly extended the timeline, so we postponed the idea.
We held demo sessions with engineering after the first drafts and once the final mockups were ready.
Of all the planned features for the first iteration, the only one we couldn't develop in time was image cropping. Everything else was implemented fully.
This was possible because I showed the entire "spaceship" early on — the full "six-month-later" vision — and compared to that, the final reduced scope seemed realistic and safe for the team.
From the moment the task was given to me till the final release, the project took 2.5 months — the fastest large-scale implementation in my experience. We launched on the planned release date and enabled the new functionality to a share of users in an A/B test.
This confirmed that the new version increases engagement without negatively affecting key metrics.
Within this project I:
- Drafted the evolution strategy for the page
- Created the mockup drafts and final designs
- Created a mini UI-kit of Quotes components
- Coordinated approvals from the product manager, engineering team, and within the design department
- Prepared mockups in two languages
What I'm most proud of is that I was able to convince the team to deliver almost the entire scope, thanks to presenting the full concept early in the process.
From a process standpoint, this was one of the smoothest projects I've ever worked on — and I want to replicate this approach in future work.
The project has been live for less than a month, so I haven't drastically changed my opinion about any decisions yet, but I already have some thoughts for the second iteration.
In the next version, I want to
- Add image cropping
- Update and expand cover presets (and potentially connect a library like Unsplash)
- Refine the Quotes settings themselves, as we barely touched them this time