Etta Wins G2 Best Usability Award

Our mobile-first business travel management platform, Etta, was built to transform the corporate travel experience. We give travelers a seamless, safe, delightful experience so they can focus on their business, not the logistics of their business trip. 

Every feature we create relentlessly focuses on our users. So it’s thrilling to know they think we’re doing a great job.

Recently, thousands of our users, including our road warriors, our corporate globetrotters, and their travel managers, selected Etta as the top travel software for usability. Receiving a number of recent recognitions from G2 is a real honor for all of us at Deem.

Etta scored a 9.43 out of 10 on G2.com’s Travel Management Usability index. The awards are based on authentic, unbiased, timely reviews from verified users. The Usability award includes criteria such as customer satisfaction in ease of use, adoption rates, and ease of admin.

(If you’d like to read more about G2’s selection process and methodology, you can go in-depth here.)

A human-centered design approach 

At Deem, we are traveler-centric in everything we do; we focus on the end-to-end experience for our users. We start with an approach known as human-centered design (HCD). HCD is a philosophy and method of designing products based on empathy and understanding of our end users — in our case, travelers and their corporate travel managers. 

As the head of product design, my job is to understand, advocate for, and innovate on behalf of all users who depend on our tools all over the world.

Now, the word “innovation” gets thrown around a lot. To me, innovating means taking something and making it better, smoother, and more enjoyable to use. We are constantly innovating Etta, evolving its features and functionality to match and exceed the expectations of every person using it. We don’t want Etta to just be useful, we want travelers to look forward to interactions with Etta, to put their trust enthusiastically in our care.

We use a human-centered design approach for a very simple reason: we know it works. Not only do our travelers want to use Etta, they actually like using it. Etta has a 91% adoption rate. 

At every touchpoint, from an email message to a small notification to a quick interaction the traveler has with Etta when boarding a plane, we are committed to creating a frictionless experience for everyone. Our goal is to support our travelers on all legs of their journey. Happy travelers make for happy travel managers. Ultimately, Etta empowers their entire company. 

Usability is for travel managers, too

The responsibilities of corporate travel managers can shift quickly given the complexities in today’s world. Etta makes the road less bumpy for travel managers with its customizable dashboard and a Single Site Builder that facilitates simpler administration and maintenance across multiple groups in one organization.

In larger organizations, complex travel business rules and policies vary by department, business unit, country, traveler type, and more. Oftentimes, when using our competitors’ legacy booking tools, travel managers have to customize settings based on each individual requirement. Each one takes several steps. Travel managers must then maintain multiple, separate sites to manage each unique configuration; they duplicate manual tasks in each every time there’s an update or change. Etta’s Single Site Builder alleviates those challenges.

Innovation occurs all the way through a product. We have to provide and support a delightful experience on both the front and back ends of the software. Etta needs to support the needs of the traveler wherever they are in the world, and it needs to support the travel managers organizing things back in the office. Only then do travelers get an effortless experience, and travel managers get improved adoption and controlled spending.

Iterative design for when new needs arise

Usability means understanding how users behave, what they need, and solving real-time issues for our travel managers and travelers. Particularly during these years in which business travel has been tricky, we want everyone using Etta to feel safe and fully ready to travel the world again.

Our implementation of the Travel SafetyCheck feature is an example of that on-the-fly development of features to support new usability needs as they arise. Created in a swift 90-day development cycle, Travel SafetyCheck gives our travelers crucial data like neighborhood safety ratings, local Covid-19 statistics, and hotel and rental car cleaning protocols right in the flow of their booking. 

It’s that commitment to the safety and success of our client’s travel programs that we hope lead to the G2 usability rating.

Fostering a culture of inclusion and accessibility

We see Etta as an ever-evolving product created out of empathy and connection to its users.

The constant drive to make Etta better comes from deep within the culture at Deem. We earned the Best Usability badge because we have incredible people thinking all day, every day about what it’s like to use Etta.

One of the biggest reasons I joined Deem was the people. The whole team is aligned in the goal of delighting our users. We believe in that vision and each other. That’s the only way to truly innovate. We weave that unified thread through everything we do, and move together even as we encourage an internal culture of healthy debate, individuality, and advocacy for unique perspectives. That’s the ethos that keeps us constantly pushing to be better.

We strongly believe that across our organization, we need to be representative and accessible to all different points of view because only then does Etta become usable for everyone, everywhere. Our internal representation and advocacy represents the spectrum of lives we want to positively impact. This is then reflected in the features of our product. 

Travelers with sight restrictions, for example, can use Etta’s iOS app features screen-reader navigation. Colors in our app were carefully selected to meet or exceed Web Content Accessibility Guidelines for contrast. Travelers with motor impairments can navigate Etta for iOS using only a keyboard or specialized switch. Keyboard focus is always clearly indicated and the path that focus takes is always logical and predictable. You can read a bit more here about how we designed Etta to be useful for our travelers with vision, hearing and cognitive impairments. 

We like to say that “travel is for everybody”. Every Etta user should have an unparalleled experience regardless of restrictions, abilities, or needs. 

We’re constantly evolving Etta to be indispensable to our travelers. That’s why we push to deeply understand our users, anticipate their concerns, and exceed their expectations. From accessibility to each interaction we design, we’re doing the right thing for users. The G2 Best Usability award lets us know they appreciate everything we do on their behalf.

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If you’d like to see what Etta can do, we’d love to show you with a platform demo.

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