trivago Resource Center
Designing a self-service enablement platform that reduces reliance on reactive partner support through scalable, structured workflows.
Global B2B partners, including hotels, advertisers, and commercial stakeholders. · 25K+ hotel partners · 55 markets
As trivago scaled, fragmented support and educational content made it difficult for users to find relevant guidance at the moment of need. This reduced self-service confidence and created growing support and maintenance costs.
The core challenge was establishing a scalable knowledge system that could support platform growth without increasing operational complexity.
Research focused on how campaign information is communicated and consumed across trivago's B2B ecosystem. I interviewed 18 Account Managers and B2B customers to understand current workflows, friction points, and reuse patterns.
To inform a scalable information architecture, I led structured ideation workshops, including an Affinity Mapping session with 8 Account Managers and cross-functional partners, aligning internal and customer mental models to guide content structure and navigation.
Objectives
- Enable rapid situational awareness across campaigns and updates
- Establish a scalable, topic-based information architecture aligned with Account Manager workflows
- Shift from reactive support to proactive, self-service engagement
- Support reusable, campaign-level visuals that scale consistently across departments and channels
Information Architecture Strategy
To align the B2B platform with real Account Manager and customer needs, I facilitated structured ideation workshops focused on extracting decision-ready insights, not just generating ideas.
I synthesized qualitative inputs into behavioral and informational patterns, clustering signals into themes that directly informed the platform's content model, navigation hierarchy, and ownership structure.
- Visual explanations significantly improved comprehension, especially when communicating complex campaign mechanics and changes.
- High operational cost for Account Managers stemmed from repeated manual explanations and ad-hoc communication.
- Centralized, reusable campaign knowledge created strong business leverage at scale by reducing duplication across teams.
- Clear access and ownership boundaries increased trust and relevance without fragmenting the experience.
Strategic Direction
Based on research synthesis and stakeholder alignment, the following design requirements guided solution exploration:
- Establish a clear, scalable structure for intuitive navigation
- Embed visual explanations within campaign articles to improve comprehension
- Prioritize search as the primary entry point, surfaced on the homepage alongside frequently accessed topics
- Notify users of new or updated content to support ongoing engagement
- Integrate the Resource Center within the trivago Intelligence platform to align with B2B bidding workflows
Multiple design alternatives were explored against these requirements to identify the most effective direction.
Concept Selection & Rationale
- Decision: A topic-driven information architecture was selected for the Resource Center.
- Why: It aligned with how AMs and B2B users group information, reduced cognitive load through clear hierarchy, and supported search as the primary entry point.
- Impact: Enabled faster content discovery, reduced repeated AM explanations, and established a scalable foundation for future campaigns and updates.
Prototype
A high-fidelity prototype synthesized insights from research, concept exploration, and design evaluation, and was used to validate decision confidence, interaction clarity, and scalability through user testing.
User Testing: Focus Group
Four Account Managers at trivago participated in a focus group session where they discussed the functionalities and handling of the prototype.
Participants were satisfied with changes in general and they provided some feedback. These were the key findings from the session:
- Having a shortcut to popular topics: The initial design didn't have tags of popular topics, but all participants expected the most frequently searched topics available near the search bar area
- Adding notifications section: The initial design didn't have a notifications section and participants thought this is crucial for communications between trivago and B2B customers for updates, so this has been added in the last iteration
Quotes from Focus Group
Impact
After an official release of trivago Resource Center, I tracked down the performance of the platform for a duration of 3 month with Hotjar Heatmap and the result is below. I could see that users don't really scroll down since landing on homepage. The team discussed how could we increase the visibility of Featured Articles and news in notifications that are hidden.
Overall, the big gains were:
- Account Managers spent 1/2 less time for onboarding new/ existing customers
- Account Managers also educated themselves about different topics on Resource Center
- 32% of an increase of traffic on trivago Intelligence as Resource Center lives in the tool
With the core direction validated, subsequent iterations focus on targeted experiments to optimize comparison efficiency, clarity, and conversion.
The creation of the design proposal should ideally initiate two further workstreams — Extended testing and self-reflection as below:
- Taking preliminary testing as a starting point further tests of the prototype should be conducted (e.g. A/B Testing, session recordings, etc.) in order to more finely delineate user experience
- Potential extension of testing to other prototypes with new/ different functionalities to generate or further develop novel ideas
- In order to continuously improve both processes and designs, time should be taken to reflect on all aspects of the research and design process, focusing specifically on major pain points
- Systematic development and documentation of lessons learned to share within the team and stakeholders