Language tweaks to increase conversion
The brief
Company: KAYAK
Background: Price Alerts are automatic alerts to a user’s inbox when prices change for flights, cars and hotels they’re interested in.
Problem: Within the segment of users who set Price Alerts, conversion was high: 67% of all email revenue in 2025 came from Price Alerts. Yet the percentage of KAYAK users actually setting a Price Alert was relatively low. I felt the copy was dry and not very appealing - on an already busy page it blended into the background. Using copy tweaks, I set out to increase engagement with Price Alerts on the Search Results Page.
Solution: Copy tweaks and out-the-box thinking.
The work
The first test
Focusing on the Flight’s search results page, I rewrote the Price Alerts copy focusing on the benefit for the user rather than a product description.
I wrote a few versions to A/B/C test.
There was a clear winner (pictured). With just this test alone, we saw a 9% lift in Price Alert creation.
I had decided to use “don’t” as the opening word. Product copy is often very positive and direction-led: continue, do this, get that. It’s rare to see “don’t” in product outside of an error message, so I felt this would hopefully catch a user’s attention on a busy screen. It also hits the nerve directly - users often overpay for flights.
The second test
Emboldened by my success, we decided to alter the sign-in pop-ups that appear when a user clicks “Track prices” (in order to set a Price Alert, we need your email address to send you price changes).
Again we tested a few versions against the control, but there was one variant that came out most successful (pictured).
Whilst it might seem a bit abrupt compared to “Sign in to get Price Alerts” kind of copy, it communicated directly to the user in 3 words exactly what they would get if they entered their email.
The results
The project included just copy tweaks (no design work) at various touch-points throughout the Flights user journey. We saw incredible results overall.
+6% lift in Price Alert creation.
+670,000 Price Alerts created (yearly).
+$80,000 incremental revenue (yearly).
This was an incredibly rewarding project to work on as the first UX Writer at KAYAK. Being able to demonstrate the tangible value behind good UX Writing so quickly increased buy in from different teams across the business. Very excitingly, seeing how much impact we could have led to an internal project to build a UX Copy Console, to make testing copy possible without engineer or product team input. (The DREAM!)
