I’ve booked all hotels for my trip in Spain. When going from a hotel’s site to another, I’ve realized that I was looking for:
- The price.
- The services.
- The pictures.
- The location.
Easy isn’t it? For me, those 4 criterias should be easily accessible on every hotel website. I really don’t want to search for them.
Yesterday, while looking for an hotel in Granada, I’ve found: Hostal Meridiano in Granada.
Just try to take a look at the pictures. You’ll have to wait for them to appear and you can’t click on them to see them bigger. I got frustrated a bit. I didn’t have time to lose. I’ve left this website. I won’t book there.
In 20 seconds, they lost my business.
And by the way, this website is a perfect example of a non-friendly for search engines website. Just take a look at the source code. There is absolutely no content that search engines can index…
Read also : Adobe Flash is not a Friend of Search Engines
Montreal - Spain from May 5th to May 22nd on Air Transat.
I booked with voyagesarabais.com. These guys offer pretty low airfares and, as much as I know, they offer a good service.
They are from Trois-Rivières, Quebec and they are doing an awesome job to be the leader in Quebec’s tourism industry. I’m not paid to say that. ; )
My previous post about usability is, among others, “dedicated” to this company. They have cheap airfares and packages but it is soooo frustrating to navigate on their website. They use the engine from Softvoyage which is, by far, a leader in usability problems. Even this morning I had to manage with other problems like the fact that when we change the departure date, it modifies automatically the return date even if I’ve already changed the return date myself. It’s nothing big but it’s annoying.
Also, I wonder if voyagesarabais.com knows how much it will help them to optimize their website for search engines. It would surely bring more traffic… and sales!
P.S. How come I live so far from Europe!? Each time I have to pay “too much” for plane tickets!
As I always say, the 80-20 rule is what you should focus on. It applies perfectly to usability.
I’m actually planning a trip to Spain (lucky me!). Since I’m trying to get the better price for my plane ticket, I’m going thru a lot (and a lot!) of airfare websites. Some of them are well done but some others made me so frustrated! When tourists are looking for tickets, a car to rent, an hotel to book, they most of the time make a lot of searches on each websites. You can imagine how frustrating and discouraging it is to be slowed down by usability problems. You want tourists to buy tickets from you, then be sure that it is easy for them to do so. Happy experiences will also make them come back next time!
Here is a list of usability problems that you should fix quickly in case of an airfare search form:
- Customer should not always have to fill the form and he wants to change a date or a destination.
- The most used item (for example : a dropdown list of years for a leaving date) should be selected as default. We are December 28th 2006. Why is “2006″ the default date in the dropdown? Sure we are in 2006 but 99% of people are searching for 2007!
- Calendars are cool but please give alternatives. Calendars are good for some of the customers but for others it is simpler to write down the date directly.
- In the French version of your website you should use the french names of the countries/cities in your lists.
- If someone is accidently searching for past dates do not launch the search process for nothing. Tell him right away that the entered dates are not valid.
In conclusion, I would suggest you to use your own forms from a customer perspective, you’ll see that it is not always easy to use. ; )