Travel agency website - Essay Example

User Interface Design Travel Agency Website Introduction to Travel Agency Travel agency is a business which sells and trades travel related products and services to the end-user customers on behalf of the third-party travel suppliers. These third-party travel suppliers include airliners, hotels, cruise liners, tour companies, etc. In addition to dealing with ordinary tourists, most travel agents have a special department devoted to travel arrangements for business travelers, while some agencies specialize in commercial and business travelers. Some agencies also serve as general service agents for foreign travel companies in different countries. There are many travel agents working around the world. They usually work on the basis of taking some compensation for each service sold by the agency to the customers. The main function of the travel agents is to act as an agent, which is to sell travel products and services on behalf of a supplier. Consequently, unlike other retail businesses, they do not keep a stock in hand. A package holiday or a ticket is not purchased from a supplier unless a customer requests that purchase. Travel agencies became more commonplace with the development of commercial aviation starting in the 1920s. Originally, the agencies largely catered to middle-class customers, but the post-war boom in mass-market package holidays resulted in travel agencies on the main streets of most of the cities, catering to a working class clientele looking for a cheap overseas holidays. There are three different types of agencies: these are Multiples, Miniples and Independent Agencies. The former comprise a number of national chains, often owned by international conglomerates. It is now quite common for the large mass-market tour companies to purchase a controlling interest in a chain of travel agencies, in order to control the distribution of their product. The smaller chains are often based in particular regions or districts. Independent Agencies usually cater for a special or niche market. Some cater to the needs of residents in an up-market commuter town or suburb, or concentrate upon a particular area or group or an activity such as sports. There are 2 approaches of travel agents. One is the traditional multi-destination travel agent based in the originating location of the traveler and the other is the destination focused travel agent that is based in the destination and delivers an expertise on that location. All travel agents generally have a well-maintained website through which the customers book their tickets and travel plans. The popularity of the travel agency depends on the user interface of the website of that particular travel agency. One such travel agency website has been developed. To develop any website, we need to take into consideration the various aspects of building a good user interface of the website. The travel agency website can be used to book tickets, check trip deals and trip packages, create trip itineraries, etc. The main options of which the user might want to perform are: Home: The web site home page will have certain information about some or all of the options. Vacation Packages: The vacation packages provide the vacation packages customers usually prefer. Search Vacations: The user can search for vacation packages if he or she wants to go on a vacation with a package. Search Top Deals: The user can search for the top deals in the vacation packages and select the best ones. Flights: This option deals with booking of flight tickets to the respective destinations. Search Flights: The user can search for the flights going to their destination. The user can search and book tickets here. Top deals: The user can search for the top deals in the flight tickets to the desired destination and also book the tickets for the destination. Hotels: Here the customers can book hotels for accommodation. Search Hotels: Users can search for hotels for accommodation at the respective destination. Top Deals: The users can search for deals among the hotels too. Some hotels offer discounts. Cars: Customers are given the option of renting cars or railway to the desired destination. Search Car Rentals: The users can search for car rentals timings. The website is designed by taking into consideration the Ps, As, Cs and the Ts of task analysis. The P of PACT refers to the user characteristics and skills. The A refers to how the activities are currently carried out and how they can be improved. The C refers to the environment of the activity. The T of PACT refers to the tools used and how new developments can be used. People: The cognitive characteristics and the skills of the users were taken into account while creating the website. The level and duration of attention, perception, memory, learning abilities, fears and personality characteristics are the most important in determining the effectiveness of the website. Also the physical abilities of most people have to be taken into account since different people perceive things differently depending upon the age differences and physical abilities. It is important to know what exactly motivates and pleases people. It is often the expectations and sometimes experience which holds the key to motivation and pleasing of people. The usability also depends to a large extent on the language of the people, the culture of the people, etc. For example, in Microsoft Excel there are two buttons, one labeled with a cross and the other a tick. In the US a tick is used for acceptance and the cross rejection, but in Ireland a tick or a cross can be used to show acceptance. Website users are not from one group of people. They are all from different parts of the world with different likings, different habits and different traditions and customs. They have a lot of choice between what to choose from. Therefore, it is very essential to encourage them to return to one's website. Activities People will have different goals, tasks and actions. Each person will react differently to different actions. Therefore, the frequent tasks should be easy to do and infrequent tasks should be easy to learn or remember. The action being performed must be continuous and should not be interrupted. The quality of the activities should be maintained. Context Context also plays an important role in determining the effectiveness of the User interface of any software or a website. The context could be physical environments which could be noisy, cold, wet, dirty, and stressful. It also includes circumstances under which activities happen like time, place, pressure of work or time. Technologies Technology is an inseparable part of the task analysis. It is essential to know what kind of technology will have to be used to design or develop a website or software. Different kinds of technologies can be used to develop the same kind of application. Therefore, it is necessary to know what technology can support the functionalities required by the customer best. For the travel agency website, the people will be from different parts of the country. The thinking capacity of every one of them will be different. The level of perceiving things will be different for each and every person. Therefore, the website has to be developed keeping in consideration the intellectual levels of the general public. The main task of the travel agency is to book tickets for the customers for their desired destination. However, the preferences of travel for each one of the customers will be different which makes it necessary for the travel agents to keep other means of travel open for customers. Some customers might like to travel flights while others might want to travel by cars or trains. Therefore, provisions for these have to be made so that all the customers are happy with the service of the travel agency. Task Analysis The first task would be to gather the attention of the customer when the customer visits the website of the travel agency. The user interface will be designed specially for this reason. The home page will have flight search tool. The home page tool will also have information about the different vacation deals and packages. The screenshot of the home page is shown below: Fig1: Home Page If the customer is new, he will have to sign up (create a new account). The link for signing up is on the top right corner "sign up". The customer will go and click the link. The page to gather information about the customer will be shown to the customer. The screenshot is shown below: Fig2: Account Creation Similarly, if the customer already has an account, then he will click on the "sign-in" link. The screenshot is shown below: Fig3: Login Form If the customer wants to book flights, he will click on the flights button. The screenshot of the web page is shown as under: Fig4: Flights Page The customer might want to take a look at the vacation packages in which case, he will click on the vacation packages button. The screenshot is shown below: Fig5: Vacations Page Here, there is another option called top deals which includes deals on vacation trips. The screenshot after clicking this link is below: Fig6: Vacation Deals If the customer clicks on the hotels button to search for hotels, the screenshot after the action is shown below: Fig7: Hotels Page Here again, the customer has the option of checking for deals on hotels. The screenshot after clicking this link is shown as under: Fig8: Hotel Deals Page The customer has the option traveling through cars. The screenshot after clicking on the cars button is shown below: Fig9: Cars Page Requirements Functional Non-Functional Links on Home Page Yes No Advertisements No Yes Flight Search Yes No Lists of Information No Yes Car Search Yes No Account Creation Form Yes No Logging In Form Yes No Hotel Search Yes No Hotel Deals No Yes Vacation Package Yes No Vacation Deals No Yes Design Decisions The website had to be built taking into consideration that people of different intellectual levels might access the website. These people might perceive things in a different manner and at different pace. Therefore, the website was built so as to make it accessible to everyone. The home page has the flight search tool and the creation of account and logging in links as well as the links to different services provided. Also the home page contains the vacation packages and deals and some information related to other services. There is some space left so that some advertisements can be put in so that the attention of the customers is not lost at all times. All the web pages have been designed to keep the attention of the customers for as long a time possible. The website is designed to attract customers. The website is designed in accordance with the principles of HCI (Human Computer Interaction). Read More