Elevating the homepage experience of an iconic hospitality brand

The impact

MGM Resorts International is a global hospitality and entertainment company operating destination resorts in Las Vegas and beyond. This redesign of their homepage drove +$15.3M in annualized incremental revenue, +$9.2M in incremental EBITDAR, +25% traffic to booking on desktop, and a +13.7% lift in average order value, plus a Webby Award nomination for Best Responsive/Adaptive Design for Mobile Websites. I owned the redesign end-to-end as Senior Product Designer, from research through documented handoff.

Reimagined a corporate homepage for guest discovery

How can we increase conversion and exploration of offerings on the homepage? The legacy homepage was designed with a corporate, investor-focused approach and did not effectively cater to the needs of resort guests looking to book rooms. This resulted in suboptimal conversion rates and a lack of engagement with certain modules. Users were not browsing beyond the hero section, missing out on key information and booking opportunities.

Business objectives

• Increase traffic to booking & showcased offerings
• Increased awareness of breadth of offerings & rewards program
• Increased awareness of MGM’s resort portfolio

Separated booking from storytelling, instead of overloading one hero

Rather than layer more fixes onto a single, overloaded hero trying to sell rooms, promote offers, and educate guests all at once, I proposed splitting those jobs apart: a streamlined booking module, and a separate homepage narrative built for discovery and brand education. I built the new design in MGM’s latest Gen3 design language, and worked with an accessibility consultant to hit WCAG AA standards, a first for the team. This was a trailblazing cross-team project on a new tech stack, laying the foundation for MGM’s new design system, Vega.

Consolidated room booking module

To better serve travelers, I streamlined the room booking module based on customer research and online hospitality best practices. The room booking module was separated from the hero image to focus on non-room promotions. Results led to increased traffic and conversion rate to room booking and showcased offerings.

New promo cards, category navigation & carousels

To enhance the discovery of MGM’s extensive offerings and promote its rewards program, I introduced new features such as a “Find Something Unforgettable” featured carousel for selling more offerings on the page efficiently, and a “Continue Browsing” recently viewed carousel serving as a browsing history for returning guests, boosting conversion by 6%. The “Start Your Next Escape” category navigation helps customers effortlessly find offers, dining, and entertainment, addressing a pain point for mobile web navigation.

“Meet Our Resorts” module

I created the “Meet Our Resorts” experience to visually showcase each resort’s architecture, rooms, and key amenities as a tool for brand education. In the future, this could evolve into a comprehensive resorts category page. Not shown is the MGM Rewards promo card, which was designed to dynamically adjust content and calls-to-action based on login state, driving MGM Rewards sign-ups and logins.

Early research and synthesis

I began this project by doing an audit of the current homepage experience and working with Product partners to collect useful clickthrough and scroll data as seen in the heatmap below. Next, I worked with my supporting design colleague to collect inspiration from other homepages in the hospitality industry. The final image shows an audit I conducted of MGM’s offer cards, which were varied and inconsistent across offer types and category pages. Part of this project involved designing a more scalable offer card.

I audited the legacy homepage against clickthrough and scroll-depth data to see which modules guests actually used.

I worked with my supporting design colleague to collect inspiration of other homepages in the hospitality industry.

Part of this project involved designing a more scalable offer card.

Ideation and concept studies

The following screen showcases early wireframes used in a concept study. The next screen shows design explorations of the “Meet Our Resorts” experience. A modal approach was chosen to address guests’ need for visual context. The higher-fidelity mockups reflect the refined concepts tested in a “Next Click” study.

These early wireframes let us pressure-test the concept before investing in higher fidelity.

I explored several formats before landing on a modal, since guests needed visual context without leaving the page.

These higher-fidelity mockups reflect what held up in the “Next Click” study.

Design and accessibility documentation

I take pride in completing thorough documentation. This serves two purposes: it helps partners in Engineering more efficiently develop based on designs, and it reduces the amount of time I need to help with design QA. The first two screens below show zoomed-in and zoomed-out views of design documentation completed for this project. The latter two images show zoomed-in and zoomed-out views of accessibility documentation completed for this project.

Zoomed out: the full scope of design documentation handed off to Engineering.

Zoomed in: enough detail for Engineering to build without guessing.

Zoomed out: accessibility documentation covering the full page, built with our accessibility consultant.

Zoomed in: keyboard and screen-reader behavior specified down to the component level.

Would give “Meet Our Resorts” more room to grow

Looking back, “Meet Our Resorts” was scoped as a homepage module when it really wanted to be its own destination: a full category page where guests could compare architecture, rooms, and amenities across MGM’s portfolio before ever clicking through from the homepage. I’d push for that larger scope next time, rather than fitting brand education into a single section.