Travel Sites
With the holidays soon approaching, it seems I'm getting a lot of calls from relatives and friends about booking trips. Of course, these all comes about because of our recent relocation to sunny Florida.
I typically turn to the usual suspects when it comes to researching flights and tickets, Expedia and Travelocity. These sites are designed to be easy to use and with the user in mind. Their designs and architecture are always improving. The most recent of updates is the ability to quickly search nearby airports to the destination or departure cities.
A new travel search engine is, however, on the rise. Kayak.com is designed to allow the user to not only get the cheapest tickets, but to run comparison of nearby airports. The site also allows you to use its interface to compare prices on Expedia, Travelocity and Hotwire, all with the click of a three checkboxes. The site also remembers your previous searches in order to save time on future searches. As you type in the city or airport code in the search boxes, a drop down similar to that of the Google toolbar comes up to aid you in locating your departure or destination cities.
Kayak is also designed to present a very user friendly results page which quickly allows you to select if you prefer nonstop, one stop, or two stops flights. As well, you can narrow down via flight times and price.
The bottom line is that I can now understand why Kayak.com is such an up and coming site, after all they have now achieve an Alexa ranking of 1782. Competition promotes better features and alternatives, while providing the best prices for consumers. Kayak.com is also a great example of conveniences presented to users. It is amazing what great design and information architecture can do for a site. Expedia (Alexa of 542) and Travelocity (Alexa of 781), better get up to speed on the technology back end or they will loose their placing among the travel sites.Labels: Alexa, American Airlines, Expedia, Google, Travelocity
I typically turn to the usual suspects when it comes to researching flights and tickets, Expedia and Travelocity. These sites are designed to be easy to use and with the user in mind. Their designs and architecture are always improving. The most recent of updates is the ability to quickly search nearby airports to the destination or departure cities.
A new travel search engine is, however, on the rise. Kayak.com is designed to allow the user to not only get the cheapest tickets, but to run comparison of nearby airports. The site also allows you to use its interface to compare prices on Expedia, Travelocity and Hotwire, all with the click of a three checkboxes. The site also remembers your previous searches in order to save time on future searches. As you type in the city or airport code in the search boxes, a drop down similar to that of the Google toolbar comes up to aid you in locating your departure or destination cities.
Kayak is also designed to present a very user friendly results page which quickly allows you to select if you prefer nonstop, one stop, or two stops flights. As well, you can narrow down via flight times and price.
The bottom line is that I can now understand why Kayak.com is such an up and coming site, after all they have now achieve an Alexa ranking of 1782. Competition promotes better features and alternatives, while providing the best prices for consumers. Kayak.com is also a great example of conveniences presented to users. It is amazing what great design and information architecture can do for a site. Expedia (Alexa of 542) and Travelocity (Alexa of 781), better get up to speed on the technology back end or they will loose their placing among the travel sites.
Labels: Alexa, American Airlines, Expedia, Google, Travelocity
posted by Death is Endless at
10:38 PM
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