Airline Meals.net - browse before you eat!

I hate airline meals. The whole idea of eating food which is everything but fresh, using plastic cutlery and trying hard not to spill your murky orange juice while breathing makes me very nervous. However, I know of many people who actually enjoy eating on planes. If you wish to know how your next airline meal is going to look like, check out airlinemeals.net. It's a super cool website with one goal: to document all of the world's airline meals.

So, if you really want to see what's for breakfast in Royal Nepal, or what is the weird yellow thing served for dinner in Sudan Airways (see image) - this is your best source. For some reason they stopped updating it in 2007, but still have a lot of visual information to offer. I liked it a lot, as it's a great example of how to engage worldwide users in eTourism projects.

Airports websites and usability: A crucial match

Your website is your business card, the gate to the service you offer or the product you sale. An airport's website offers so many services to people from different countries and with different levels of web experience, from flight information to weather updates. For that reason it has to follow the guidelines of international usability standards. One airport system that seems to ignore those standards stands in the centre of this post.

The Chicago airport system contains three airports, which are being represented in one website. A quick examination of the home page and some pages reveals the following problems:



1. The links in the upper navigation bar are not clickable. They don't even look like links because of their colour. At least they get some background colour on mouse-over.

2. What are ADA Friendly Services? And what is TSA? No one will click on something so vague. If you want the users to reach your content, provide clear headings and avoid initials.

3. A click on TSA (if someone will do it for some reason) leads to another website. While it's important to expose the users for content regarding transportation security, I'm not sure it's smart to show them the way out so soon. Why not creating a page in your website with selected pieces of content, with a link to the other website at the bottom?

4. Flight information is probably the most popular reason for people to visit an airport's website. In the Chicago website, the link to this information will work only from the home page. But, if the users thought they should first choose an airport and only then click on the "Flight Information" not-so-friendly link (like I did), nothing will happen. How confusing.

5. There is no Home button, and the site's heading is not a link to the home page. We're stuck!

Well, you got the idea. The Chicago airport system's website needs a total makeover before it can really offer a good user experience.

When booking systems are not too friendly

Accommodation booking systems have to be safe, reliable and above all - easy to use. If the user has to spend time learning a complex system, he will probably prefer to search for another hotel in the area. Why would someone give his or her credit card number after a negative user experience? Why picking an accommodation with a problematic digital representation?

Take the Lake House for example. It's a luxury hotel in Daylesford, Australia, which is an area known as the region's "Spa Country". I tried to book a room for one night through their website, and for some reason couldn't do so. First there was the confusing layout of the page, which made me think too much about what should I click first: Is it the date? Or maybe the room type? And if I chose the date first, why am I asked to choose it again after clicking on the desired room? Now, that's a very bad start.

Later, I am asked to choose an extra activity ("Enhance Your Stay" they call it, and forget to mention it's optional). The hot mineral water spa for 2 looks interesting, but I want to know some more about it before I say goodbye to $70, and can't find the information. Is it a private little pool or a public one? What is the temperature of the water? With no answers, I choose not to choose.

Finally, there is the subtotal issue. Why does it show $0? I picked a room, I chose a date - tell me how much it is and let me pack, I want to get out of the city and hit the road. It took me 24 hours to realize the problem: The booking system will show you the total amount only if you choose more than one night. They won't tell you that, you'll have to figure it out for yourself. Now I really need a vacation.

Hotels Combined.com - first impressions

Hotels Combined is a new hotel price comparison website, for all of you who have to see the full picture before booking a room. I definitely belong to this group of people, and so decided to give it a try.

The home page is warm and friendly, with bright colors and a simple (yet effective) search engine. There are two short paragraphs about the site's purpose (who needs more?), and a useful box with links to leading travel destinations. It could have been better to use a tag cloud instead, with the most requested destinations by the users, but it's definitely not a must.

Next, the system gathers all the information in order to provide the results. This process takes about 6-8 seconds, during which the users are given some interesting facts about the website - a great way to overcome the relatively long waiting time. Then comes the excellent results page, which provides exactly what a user in such a site is looking for: hotels, prices and many filtering and sorting options. I especially liked the option for changing the currency display. There is nothing too exciting or innovative about it, and yet not all eTourism sites use it. Sparing the user the effort to search for a currency conversion website on another browser is an example of a good user experience.

One thing that has to be fixed is the path leading to the detailed information on each hotel. At the moment, the most prominent links on the search results page are obviously the price links. These are the links most users will click on next. The problem is, what if those users wanted to learn some more about the hotel? Read some reviews? Check the photos? For them, the journey with Hotels Combined is over even if they didn't get everything they needed from the website, as they are transferred to the Hotel's official website to reserve the room. For now, the only visible way to get to the hotel info page is via the small thumbnail on the right. Hiding the link for such an important page under a tiny picture, with zero percent clickability, is bad in terms of usability. I bet many users skip it because of that.

Apart from that small issue, it is a great website. After all, it was remarked “phenomenal” in 2008 by Arthur Frommer himself. Respect!

Translate your eTourism site with Google

Internationalization of websites, and especially those who have something to sell, is important for a good user experience. On eTourism sites, where the intended audience is coming from many locations around the globe, it is crucial. The best option would obviously be to hire professional translators, but that is also the most expensive one, and so wouldn't match small sites' budget. If you own a small website for your hostel or travel company, use Google's free translator tool.

All you need to do is simply copy and paste a code they provide you to a web page (after choosing your site's main language), and from that moment on you can offer to your users instant access to automatic translations of that page. Of course, it can never be 100% accurate, but it's better than nothing. Give it a try today!

Usability guidelines for eTicketing sites

When I lived in Australia and was looking for cheap flights, Jet Star.com was my best friend. Every purchase on that site was a real pleasure, as it followed (and still does) basic usability guidelines for eTicketing sites, such as providing a calendar, promoting the cheapest fare and so on. I was a loyal costumer not only because of the ticket price tag - but also thanks to the wonderful user experience I had while using the site.

So, what's the big secret? How do I turn my eTicketing site into a users' heaven? Webcredible, a London based usability agency, published a great report on the topic based on a study of online flight booking services from July 2006. Yep, it's 2 years old but still very relevant.

Menogo.com - Travel complaints online

Menogo.com is the new address for travel-related complaints, so if you've just came back from a holiday and want to tell the world how bad your hotel room was - just login and start writing. It's a great idea, as long as it stays in the hands of the end user and doesn't turn into a battle ground for tourism operators worldwide (and it probably will, just give them 2-3 months).

In terms of usability, I found a few problems that have to be fixed in order to improve the user experience:

1. Browsing for "travel NoGo's" is very limited. You can either type words in the search box or to choose links from the tag cloud. But what if I want, for example, to read about hotels in Australia? the combination of "australia"+"hotels" brings a lot of unrelated results. It could have been much better to present two navigational sections: country/destination and the NoGo type (hotel, airline etc). The funny thing is, when I wanted to add a NoGo I was asked to choose both a country and a category - but for some reason it's not a part of the browsing system yet.

2. The Add NoGo writing space offers light text on a dark background (see image below). Yes, it is visually interesting, but it's not readable. For a perfect readability, stick with the traditional black on white.

3. Many of the site members chose not to upload a personal photo to their profiles. While it's 100% fine on other sites, here - where credibility is a major issue - it's different. If menogo.com wants to be perceived as a credible website with an excellent reputation, adding an image to a user's profile should be compulsory.