Front-End Guide for API Partners

Mar 17, 2021 | Travel Commerce Partners

Building a Great Front-end

As a Viator API Partner you can choose which products to highlight on your website and/or app and retrieve all details via the API.

How you choose to display these products is up to you – every implementation is unique.

Based on our years of experience with Viator.com and evaluating hundreds of affiliates sites, we have compiled a front-end guide for you, including UX best practices and how to optimize conversion.

Our Integrations Team is here to support you throughout the integration process.

Quick find

Using a Landing Page

Your travelers may be introduced to Viator tours and experiences via a landing page.

The structure of your integration and the contents of your landing page can vary greatly, based on your business needs. Often, the landing page takes the form of a home page or a Tours & Activities section.

The landing page sets the tone for the traveler, and should enable quick and easy navigation of the site while highlighting top destinations and products.

landing page

Search results page (SRP)

A search results page (SRP) allows travelers to narrow down their search to quickly and easily find the right tour or activity for them.

An SRP should enable users to quickly apply filters and locate their desired product(s). The display of high revenue / high conversion products should be prioritized.

Hover over the pink dots to get more detail. 

Product Display Page (PDP)

The product display page (PDP) is an up close view of an individual product, which allows users to view supplier and traveler images, detailed itineraries, reviews, and more.

A PDP should convey all product information needed for users to make their purchasing decision. It is recommended that all product information available to a partner be visible to customers via one unified PDP per product.

Sample PDP

Below is an example of a Viator PDP. We’ve annotated all the important elements necessary to give a traveler all the relevant information to make a booking with confidence.

You do not need to follow the same structure of our PDP when building your PDPs. We’ve catered our PDPs to our audience, and you should consider what’s most relevant to your audience when building out your PDPs.

Hover over the pink dots to get more detail. 

Pricing (Merchant Partners only)

The API will return three prices:

Merchant Net Price

The amount that Viator will invoice the merchant for this sale, excluding the transaction fee.

Merchant Total Price

The total amount that Viator will invoice the merchant for this sale, including the transaction fee.

Suggested Retail Price

The recommended retail price for the product – this is the price that the product is sold at on the Viator site. As the merchant of record, the retail prices you set are entirely your decision.

Taxonomy

In order to efficiently manage our inventory of 300,000+ tours & activities, Viator’s site taxonomy is available via our API. All products are mapped to taxonomic IDs to enable sorting and filtering.

A single product can be mapped to multiple taxonomic elements:

Destinations

Destinations follow a hierarchy of country -> region -> city

Attractions

Attractions are major tourist sites such as landmarks, city squares/plazas, or geographic features.

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Categories

Tours and activities are grouped into broad descriptive ‘categories’, each of which can also include a set of narrower ‘subcategories’.

User flow

Your travelers will respond positively to a simple, easy to navigate site/app.

Viator’s user flow is designed to minimize the pages and clicks required to make a purchasing decision.

On the home page, users may make a freetext search (directs to SRP), select a top destination (directs to SRP), or select a top product (directs to PDP).

On an SRP, the user may select a product (directs to PDP), or filter by category, attraction, and sort order (updates SRP).

Front End Guide - User Flow

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