中国seo论述

10 things about the travel.co.uk website

Time for another detailed review….. lets take a look at travel.co.uk, a new website that “takes travel comparison shopping to a new level”. Its a UK based site selling mainly package holidays (at the moment) but with the intention to move into wider product sectors later.

5 things I like

Choose your booking agent and choose your holiday

This website isn’t just about choosing product – but you can choose who you are going to book with. The website takes no part in the commercial transaction between the customer and the agent.

You should be aware that none of the products and services that appear on the Site are provided by us.  They are provided by third parties over whom we have no control.  You should satisfy yourself that you wish to purchase these products or services before contracting with those third parties.  The third party providers will be supplying products and services on their own standard terms and conditions which can be found on the booking forms for the relevant product or service on the Site.

This makes a change from most online travel agency websites which tend to be about sending customers direct to suppliers.

Support for the Travel Trust Association (TTA)

Interestingly they are also taking TTA bonded agents. Great news for the smaller travel companies out there.

Shortlist

A quick view of your shortlisted items….. and you can drag and re-order…. 

And you can compare items in your shortlist side by side:

Only negative on the shortlist is that the cookie seems to be session based – so if you close your browser and revisit the site – the shortlist is gone (Virgin Holidays, for example, maintain an unsaved shortlist even if you close your browser)

Calendar

A nice calendar with price bar chart below:

However I selected the £171 price for the 9th of July…. and a popup comes up. In the modal popup an AJAX call goes and checks availability for that date / price combination.

While it is checking I can see full details of the product (above – and notice in the top right it says checking availability) – but then – without any warning – because the product is unavailable – the page refreshes to a page saying nothing available:

Ummm…. maybe I don’t like this date checking system after all!

They need to make the “unavailable” message appear on the details page – because otherwise I could have started to interact with the page – and be shocked when it fully refreshes to negative message. The user should be left in control of their experience….

The domain name

Yep – travel.co.uk is a pretty nice name.

5 things I don’t like

Spelling of accommodation

One of my pet peeves on travel websites is seeing the word accommodation misspelt. It really winds me up. Unfortunately travel.co.uk have fallen into this trap.

I am sure they will fix this in a jiffy!

Not clear enough benefits between one agent and another

While I like the concept of being able to select between different booking agents, I can’t see the benefits of one over another clearly enough.

The text describing the agency profile is too wordy – and too generic. Of course everyone is independent, of course everyone has experience – blah blah blah blah blah.

…. and price distinction between booking agents doesn’t help either…..

[Shows detail of Agent 1 vs Agent 2]

Minor point for the designers…. a potential usability issue here…. the page on the site is for selecting a different booking agent – but I read it initially as choose a booking agent – so I overlooked that a default booking agent had already been selected. My fix would be to repeat the defaulted booking agent in the “choose a different booking agent for this holiday” box.

Popup hell

Navigating around the site you end up with all sorts of modal / non-modal popups that contain core functionality and product details. Certainly this isn’t accessible but it may also be a problem for less than expert web users. Yes its funky and new – but tried and tested traditional user interface design works for a reason.

About us page not clear about not being responsible for bookings

The quote I listed above was from the terms & conditions. The T&Cs make it quite clear that travel.co.uk is not part of the transaction between the customer and the booking agent – however other pages don’t.

Yes on the homepage it says “booking direct with the company of your choice, right here on this site” – but this is easily missed….. and could easily be confused with booking with a supplier direct rather than booking with an agent direct.

I have a feeling this is going to cause all sorts of customer service issues down the road – and resulting bad press – unless they clearly define the proposition and explain it better to consumers.

While we are talking about the About us page – its about five times too long. No one will read what is probably one of the most important pages on the site. [People coming via online marketing will select a product, and just prior to the purchase decision, read the about us page in order to find out more about the company, and then go back to their product and book - if they were not upset by anything they read]

Help is unhelpful

The help is stuck in a tiny popup. What makes it worse is that you have a tiny scroll bar to move the help information up and down….. and the web designers have made the popup size locked (resizable=0) so even if I wanted to make the popup larger I can’t.

Frankly the help popup is pretty rubbish.

Summary

I am being tough on this site because it has been put together by one of the leading travel technology companies – and a leading travel website design team. They should (and could) be doing much better than this.

Maybe in 3 months the site will be great – but at the moment there is still a great deal of sandpapering to do – and a few redesigns required as well. No awards for this one yet. Luckily the awards season – and UK peak sales period for package holidays (January / February / March) – is still some way away!

我不喜欢的5点
1、accommodation的拼写

在旅游网站上我最讨厌的一件事就是看到accommodation（调整、适应）这个单词拼错。这着实让我发狂。不幸的是，travel.co.uk也中了这个圈套。

　　我相信他们很快就会调整好的。

2、选择不同代理商的好处不够清晰

　　我喜欢“能够在不同预订代理间选择”这样的概念，但选择不同代理商各有什么好处不够清晰。

　　描述代理情况的文字太多了，也太普通了。当然，每个代理都是独立的；当然，每个代理都有经验：全是废话！

　　代理商之间的价格差别同样没什么帮助：

　　（显示代理1与代理2的细节进行比较）

　　对设计者的小小建议：这里的可用性有个潜在问题，网页是为了选择一家“不同”的预订代理，但最初我觉得是在选择“一家代理”——我忽视了已经选择了默认的代理商。这家代理应当在“为假期选择一家不同的代理”里再次显示，但是没有。

　　3、弹出窗口垃圾

　　浏览网站你会以各种常见的/不常见的，包含核心功能和产品明细的弹出窗口告终。当然了，这是可以理解的，但对不那么内行的网站用户来说，也许是个问题。是的，这样做时髦、新潮，但基于某些原因，经过测试的传统用户界面设计更为奏效。

　　4、“关于我们”页面“不对预订负责”的主张不够清晰

　　主页上写道：“在网站上直接与你选择的公司进行预订”，这是很容易引起误会的，可能会被误认为直接从供应商那里预订，而不是向代理商预订。

　　我觉得，以后这可能会导致种种客服问题，并造成不良影响，除非他们明确主张，并且向顾客很好的解释。

　　“关于我们”页面里五次“关于”太长了。没人会去看哪个网页是网站上最重要的。（通过在线市场过来的用户选择一个产品，仅仅会在作出购买决定之前，阅读“关于我们”页面，来更多了解公司的情况。然后，如果他们对所看到的没什么问题，就会返回产品页面并且预订。）

　　5、“帮助”没什么帮助

　　“帮助”局限在小小的弹出窗口里。更糟糕的是，你必须使用滚动条上下翻看信息。网站设计者将弹出窗口尺寸锁定了，所以，即使我想把窗口放大也不行。

　　坦白说“帮助”弹出窗口非常垃圾。

　　总结

　　我对这个网站是刁钻了点，因为它是由一家领先的旅游技术公司，同时也是一个领先的旅游网站设计团队组建的。他们理应（也应当可以）做得更好。

　　也许3个月内网站会更好，但这时仍有很多“打磨”工作要做，同样的，也需要一些重新设计。现在还没有回报。幸运的是回报的季节，也是英国打包度假销售高峰时期（一月/二月/三月）还有一段时间！

又一个细节点评。看下travel.co.uk，一个“将旅游比较消费提高到新高度”的新网站。（此时）它有点像一个主要卖英国打包度假产品的网站，但以后的趋势会是增加更多产品类别。

五点我喜欢的

1、选择预订代理，选择你的假期

　　在网站上你不仅仅能选择产品，还可以选择向谁预订。网站不参与顾客和代理商之间的业务来往。

　　“要注意，网站上显示的产品和服务都不是我们提供的。它们是由我们无法控制的第三方提供的。你要先确定希望买这些产品和服务，然后再和这些第三方组织联系。第三方供应商会按照他们自己的标准期限和条件提供产品和服务，这些可以在网站的相关产品和服务预订表中看到。”

　　这就使得该网站与大多数在线代理网站不同，后者倾向于直接将顾客送到供应商那里。

2、支持旅游诚信协会（TTA）

　　有意思，他们支持TTA的加盟代理，对于较小的旅游公司来说是个好消息。

3、候选名单

　　浏览一下你的候选名单，你也可以通过拖动重新排序。

　　你还可以在候选名单中并列对比各项：

　　候选名单的唯一缺陷是，cookie好像是有时间限制的。如果你关闭浏览器，再重新访问网站，候选名单就没了（而即使你关掉浏览器，Virgin Holidays也可以保留未保存的候选名单）。

　　4、日历

　　下面是带价格栏图表的日历：

　　选择7月9号171英镑，就会有个弹出页面。在这常见的弹出页面上，AJAX Call会检查日期与价格绑定的有效性。

　　在它检查时，我可以看到产品的详尽信息（上图，注意右上角在检查有效性），没有任何警告。但紧接着，因为产品是无效的，网页刷新后转向一个注明“无有效产品”的网页。

　　嗯……也许我根本就不喜欢这个日期检查系统！

　　他们要把“无效”信息显示在详细资料页面，因为如果不这样，我可能已经开始看网页了，在这时刷新出现的否定页面让我无语……应当让用户掌握他们的体验！

　　5、域名

　　是的，travel.co.uk是个好名字。