Hotels.com

The problem stems from site visitors offered disabled-access rooms as an option that it cannot guarantee ahead of the person’s arrival at the hotel. As e-consultancy points out, the US’s equivalent of the UK’s Disability Discrimination Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act does not class websites as public accommodations, which are required to be accessible to disabled users.

On a related note, for anyone interested in reading material on accessibilty I can recommend the book ‘Constructing Accessible Web Sites‘ – it’s a few years old now but a good reference and introduction to the legal, business, ethical and technical aspects of accessible design.

It looks to have been significantly revised in 2006 and renamed ‘Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance‘.

I alluded to this in my comment in a recent post regarding the recently launched boo.com and that I felt the implementation of certain AJAX functionality had detracted from the user experience. Mr Nielsen also comments “They should get the basics right first,” and “Sadly most websites do not have those primary things right.”

Funnily enough, although, not particularly suprising, the writer cites a reference to the original boo.com regarding Mr. Nielsen’s warning of a return to the dotcom boom days, as an example of a site that looked great but was not easy to use.

AJAX is a development method for creating interactive web applications and can lead to more reactive browsing and contextual content. The prime examples are the multitude of flight fare aggregators that use AJAX to provide a fast user experience when sorting through flights without the browser reloading.

Implemented well and the enhanced user experience may well be a factor in a site visitor switching loyalty to a different travel company, however, it is important not to lose sight of the principles of usability design.

This festive season has again seen big increases in the number of people purchasing online. Whether it is down to improved content, increased trust in the medium or other factors such as convenience or bulk buying, the uptake in users booking their holidays online looks set to continue to rise. One example is Cumbria Tourism who have recently conducted a visitor survey and have found that internet bookings has tripled in four years, representing almost a third of all bookings. No doubt this is helped with a terrific site. The site scores highly from an accessibility perspective and is very easy to use. Coupled with great content that is presented in the various themes playing to the area’s strengths (such as lakes/outdoors and more topically Beatrix Potter) and a good balance between information and images the site provides an excellent browsing experience.

[Source: TravelMole]

The site launched a little over a week ago with an early review posted to the Travolution blog. I agree with the comments posted, the site is not easy to use and will provide many users with a poor browsing experience.

For a business that depends on its website, accessible web content and user-centred design is good and essential business practice. According to government figures UK residents in 2003 made over 61 million trips abroad and spent over £28 billion.

A quick accessibility analysis of the home page indicates that the page does not comply with all of the automatic checkpoints for W3C Web Content Accessibility guidelines, the most basic accessibility test. The site does not produce valid HTML code and does not adhere to web standards.

The upshot of the site’s poor usability is that it is not accessible to a large market of potential customers, including the disabled. There are over 10 million disabled people in the UK. Many find it difficult to shop, find information and book holidays online because most websites are not accessible. The spending power of this is estimated to be in the region of £50 billion in the UK.

Good usability practice is not just for the disabled though – the usability problems evident will impact all users equally, regardless of ability.

Some of the issues include: insufficient contrast between foreground and background colours, text that is not scalable, lack of suitable alternative text for images and likely inconsistent display across a range of devices such as PDAs and mobile phones.

Colours
The first thought that struck me was the flat monochrome and poor use of colour. The colours are too dull and not consistent with the content theme of booking a holiday. The choice of colours for the background and foreground do not provide a high level of contrast for readability.

Fixed text size
For me the text is too small and too similar in size. Unfortunately, to increase the size for Internet Explorer users is not possible. The text in the corresponding style sheet has been attributed a fixed value and selecting a size from View > Text Size has no effect.

Printing
There is a lack of support for print friendly pages. Visitors to hotel sites will regularly print details of resorts and hotels and the use of a separate print style sheet would provide this.

Interface
The page looks cluttered and the content elements do not have enough space to breathe. This is most clearly evident in the left side column where the offers hotel images and text is placed tightly against the containing boxes. I think the rounded corners have been over used and the overall effect results in a page that is hard to read and scan.

Other interface thoughts:

• As Nick Gassman on the Travolution blog pointed out, the use of the label ‘Agent id’ is confusing and could put off and deter non trade users.
• The Youtravel.com logo does not link back to the home page and the unused space to the right of the logo looks odd. Perhaps a strapline or banner related to offers would be appropriate.
• The hotel search form is poorly designed. Youtravel.com purports to have the best online booking system and with a growing database of hotels it goes without saying that an easy to use search form is a key aspect of the site’s success. It looks too cluttered and contains too many options. Perhaps it could be simplified and certain criteria (such as the Board option) could be moved to the advanced search. Youtravel.com has commented that it aims to have trade clients make up 80% of its custom but the site should tailor more appropriately to each audience).
• A pop up calendar would enable the user to quickly choose a date.
• The ‘Destinations’ element is not easily readable; the list is provided in a linear format, the scroll feature hides over half of the options and the word ‘hotels’ has been unnecessarily repeated. Perhaps this feature could be displayed on the left or right columns with more space provided for the main hotel search. The ‘Destinations’ could also be arranged in a drop down enabling the user to quickly scroll through the options – the number of hotels/resorts could also be provided in brackets to indicate the strength of Youtravel.com’s coverage in each.
• The short guide called ‘Bookings’ is badly written and although it is a new site with many first time visitors, it may be better placed in a separate (guide) area and linked to from the Hotel search form.