8 ms·

Disclosure: I built a competing tool for finding cheap flights, https://concorde.io https://concorde.io. I think the secret of Scott's success is his incredibl

Disclosure: I built a competing tool for finding cheap flights, https://concorde.io https://concorde.io. I think the secret of Scott's success is his incredible writing ability. Finding the cheap flights is the easy part. Communicating with users in a way that consistently wins over their hearts and minds takes a high level of consideration and creativity. This writing ability combined with his co-founder's understanding and application of direct response marketing has produced fantastic results. I am glad to see their success.

dabernathy89 9y ago
FYI: I am trying to update my user settings (for my airport preferences) but it won't let me without re-entering my CC information.
- jmarbach 9y ago
  Thank you for mentioning this. I'm sorry for the unnecessary repetitive credit card input. My plan is to separate the editing of payment and location preference to their own pages in the future.
sfbay 9y ago
Nice website. Fix this issue: 1) When I search with a date, it loses the depart and return dates every time. Save the dates and remember them. 2) After I select a depart date calender as Month September, it should open September when I select Return calendar.
- jmarbach 9y ago
  Thank you for the feedback! Agreed that the depart and return date inputs should be improved as you mention. I am always seeking to eliminate needless repetitive actions! I'll do my best to get this resolved quickly.
jontas 9y ago
Tiny suggestion: I was looking at flights and it was not immediately clear to me that Santa Cruz referred to Bolivia and not California. It almost made me disregard it and not click. May want to put the country name on the homepage as well.
- gleglegle 9y ago
  Santa Cruz, Bolivia (pop. 1,640,615) is much larger than Santa Cruz, CA (pop. 64,465).
  - tomjakubowski 9y ago
    While true (also, all the other flights on the list right now are US<->Not US), in GP's defense the context may not have been clear. If a fellow Angeleno asks me what I did over the weekend, I could say "I went to Venice" and my meaning (Venice, the neighborhood in LA) would be clear. Not necessarily so to someone from Chicago, or even from elsewhere in California. Having said that, a flag icon next to the city name to represent the city's country would be cute but also informational.
    - jmarbach 9y ago
      I like the idea of making use of the city's country flag. In terms of a design element, that would compliment the airline tail icons which I think are important to see from my perspective as a traveler. Thank you!
  - Simon_says 9y ago
    The number of people in Santa Cruz, Bolivia who have set foot on an airplane is probably comparably to the number in Santa Cruz, CA.
  - msutherl 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz#Places https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz#Places
mattfrommars 9y ago
Love the simplistic design of the website to give the information right away! Can you where are you sourcing the data from? I've playing with Flask and Scrapy yesterday and love to build something like it. What I have in mind, [Complete disclosure - I'm a total novice right now] Scrapy to get the data and Flask to integrate it on the web with a Boostrap front end.
- jmarbach 9y ago
  Thank you! The deals that I post and distribute are sourced from a variety of sources including manual searching with tools like Google Flights / QPX (like Scott's team), programmatic searching (expensive as others have mentioned in the comments here), forums or blogs, and of course Concorde's "Discover" tool. The Discover tool makes use of a cache of flight search data that is collected from Global Distribution Systems (GDS) such as Sabre and others. Further reading on GDS's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_distribution_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_distribution_system
flanbiscuit 9y ago
I replied to one of his emails and we had a nice back and forth even laughing at a pic response I sent him. He seems like a good person and I signed up for his premium service. I was already very interested in his premium svc but that interaction really sealed the deal for me.
- jmarbach 9y ago
  Thank you :)
professorTuring 9y ago
I'm an SCF premium, will you give me a premium 3 Month coupon in order to compare the services and maybe switch my subscription to your app?
- jmarbach 9y ago
  Please try Concorde's First Class membership free for one month using the coupon code "firstmonthfree", which is available to all users.
  - professorTuring 9y ago
    Ok, didn't see it! =)
  - professorTuring 9y ago
    Is it mandatory to fill my CC details in order to subscribe with the promotion? (I don't really enjoy doing that...)
    - jmarbach 9y ago
      Yes, sorry, at the moment it is mandatory to add a credit card to sign up for a First Class account. I believe this is actually a limitation with my payments vendor, Stripe.
Toast_ 9y ago
Do you use a particular api to find these flights?
- jmarbach 9y ago
  Not reliant on one particular API but rather a combination of API's that access flight search data caches (provided by Global Distribution Systems), manual searching, blogs, forums, and more.
adventured 9y ago
Suggestion for your site. I'd change the front page header text that says: "Discover cheap flights with Concorde." It's not the text I disagree with it, it's how you're using it. You've made it so that you have to mouse over that text to make it react (segments change color) and figure out that each section may be clickable (how do I know where they go, if I'm an average user and don't necessarily know to look at the url hover at the bottom of the browser?). Why is it an issue? It's extraordinarily bad usability, because there's nothing above the fold on your site that says: sign up. Not anywhere. There's a weird text in the upper right that says "Discover" that is changing colors, but gives no indication that it links to /sign-up. From a logical usability stand point, why would the "Discover" text be the /sign-up link, as opposed to just having a "Sign up | Login" segment. You're trying too hard to be clever / creative, you're over-doing it and it's a bad usability outcome. At the top, I'd keep the large text that is making a clear statement. Then place two or so lines of descriptive text below it, with blatant links to signing up etc. Or some variation on this. You have plenty of room to work with up in the header area.
- jmarbach 9y ago
  First I just want to say thank you for your blunt feedback on the sign up flow that I've implemented. Feedback like this is what helps me truly think critically about my assumptions and divert towards more logic-driven choices. My hesitation for not implementing traditional "sign up" language in the sign up flow is most likely due to my over-emphasis on the personality of the product at the expense of usability. On the flip side, I hope that for at least some set of users they feel as if the product is leading them on a fun adventure. That said, I like your suggestions. The path to a sign up would be abundantly clear. I'll have to experiment with more traditional language and examine the results.
HillaryBriss 9y ago
confused. none of the flights are supersonic.
- jmarbach 9y ago
  Hopefully some of them will be one day in the future!
sho 9y ago
Gave it a shot. No results from SIN, my other two "primary" airports (BKK, CGK) don't even match in your interface! Even tried NRT and nothing. I assure you these airports exist and I'm not making them up. Tried my old haunts of SYD, MEL and ADL - they match but no results. So that's 6 airports I tried with literally zero results, and half the time the (major international) airport wasn't even found. I know you're probably not focussing on my area but still not the most amazing first impression! At least a "coming soon" message would be an improvement.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
nnd 9y ago
A few suggestions: - since you are using Stripe, allow me to log in and pay without submitting my CC info over again. - when selecting home airports, how about prefilling it with the list of closest to you / busiest based on geolocation? The picker interface could be improved by allowing autocompletion as well.

dabernathy89 9y ago

FYI: I am trying to update my user settings (for my airport preferences) but it won't let me without re-entering my CC information.

jmarbach 9y ago
Thank you for mentioning this. I'm sorry for the unnecessary repetitive credit card input. My plan is to separate the editing of payment and location preference to their own pages in the future.

sfbay 9y ago

Nice website. Fix this issue: 1) When I search with a date, it loses the depart and return dates every time. Save the dates and remember them. 2) After I select a depart date calender as Month September, it should open September when I select Return calendar.

jmarbach 9y ago
Thank you for the feedback! Agreed that the depart and return date inputs should be improved as you mention. I am always seeking to eliminate needless repetitive actions! I'll do my best to get this resolved quickly.

jontas 9y ago

Tiny suggestion: I was looking at flights and it was not immediately clear to me that Santa Cruz referred to Bolivia and not California. It almost made me disregard it and not click. May want to put the country name on the homepage as well.

gleglegle 9y ago
Santa Cruz, Bolivia (pop. 1,640,615) is much larger than Santa Cruz, CA (pop. 64,465).
- tomjakubowski 9y ago
  While true (also, all the other flights on the list right now are US<->Not US), in GP's defense the context may not have been clear. If a fellow Angeleno asks me what I did over the weekend, I could say "I went to Venice" and my meaning (Venice, the neighborhood in LA) would be clear. Not necessarily so to someone from Chicago, or even from elsewhere in California. Having said that, a flag icon next to the city name to represent the city's country would be cute but also informational.
  - jmarbach 9y ago
    I like the idea of making use of the city's country flag. In terms of a design element, that would compliment the airline tail icons which I think are important to see from my perspective as a traveler. Thank you!
- Simon_says 9y ago
  The number of people in Santa Cruz, Bolivia who have set foot on an airplane is probably comparably to the number in Santa Cruz, CA.
- msutherl 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz#Places https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz#Places

mattfrommars 9y ago

Love the simplistic design of the website to give the information right away! Can you where are you sourcing the data from? I've playing with Flask and Scrapy yesterday and love to build something like it. What I have in mind, [Complete disclosure - I'm a total novice right now] Scrapy to get the data and Flask to integrate it on the web with a Boostrap front end.

jmarbach 9y ago
Thank you! The deals that I post and distribute are sourced from a variety of sources including manual searching with tools like Google Flights / QPX (like Scott's team), programmatic searching (expensive as others have mentioned in the comments here), forums or blogs, and of course Concorde's "Discover" tool. The Discover tool makes use of a cache of flight search data that is collected from Global Distribution Systems (GDS) such as Sabre and others. Further reading on GDS's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_distribution_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_distribution_system

flanbiscuit 9y ago

I replied to one of his emails and we had a nice back and forth even laughing at a pic response I sent him. He seems like a good person and I signed up for his premium service. I was already very interested in his premium svc but that interaction really sealed the deal for me.

jmarbach 9y ago
Thank you :)

professorTuring 9y ago

I'm an SCF premium, will you give me a premium 3 Month coupon in order to compare the services and maybe switch my subscription to your app?

jmarbach 9y ago
Please try Concorde's First Class membership free for one month using the coupon code "firstmonthfree", which is available to all users.
- professorTuring 9y ago
  Ok, didn't see it! =)
- professorTuring 9y ago
  Is it mandatory to fill my CC details in order to subscribe with the promotion? (I don't really enjoy doing that...)
  - jmarbach 9y ago
    Yes, sorry, at the moment it is mandatory to add a credit card to sign up for a First Class account. I believe this is actually a limitation with my payments vendor, Stripe.

Toast_ 9y ago

Do you use a particular api to find these flights?

jmarbach 9y ago
Not reliant on one particular API but rather a combination of API's that access flight search data caches (provided by Global Distribution Systems), manual searching, blogs, forums, and more.

adventured 9y ago

Suggestion for your site. I'd change the front page header text that says: "Discover cheap flights with Concorde." It's not the text I disagree with it, it's how you're using it. You've made it so that you have to mouse over that text to make it react (segments change color) and figure out that each section may be clickable (how do I know where they go, if I'm an average user and don't necessarily know to look at the url hover at the bottom of the browser?). Why is it an issue? It's extraordinarily bad usability, because there's nothing above the fold on your site that says: sign up. Not anywhere. There's a weird text in the upper right that says "Discover" that is changing colors, but gives no indication that it links to /sign-up. From a logical usability stand point, why would the "Discover" text be the /sign-up link, as opposed to just having a "Sign up | Login" segment. You're trying too hard to be clever / creative, you're over-doing it and it's a bad usability outcome. At the top, I'd keep the large text that is making a clear statement. Then place two or so lines of descriptive text below it, with blatant links to signing up etc. Or some variation on this. You have plenty of room to work with up in the header area.

jmarbach 9y ago
First I just want to say thank you for your blunt feedback on the sign up flow that I've implemented. Feedback like this is what helps me truly think critically about my assumptions and divert towards more logic-driven choices. My hesitation for not implementing traditional "sign up" language in the sign up flow is most likely due to my over-emphasis on the personality of the product at the expense of usability. On the flip side, I hope that for at least some set of users they feel as if the product is leading them on a fun adventure. That said, I like your suggestions. The path to a sign up would be abundantly clear. I'll have to experiment with more traditional language and examine the results.

HillaryBriss 9y ago

confused. none of the flights are supersonic.

jmarbach 9y ago
Hopefully some of them will be one day in the future!

sho 9y ago

Gave it a shot. No results from SIN, my other two "primary" airports (BKK, CGK) don't even match in your interface! Even tried NRT and nothing. I assure you these airports exist and I'm not making them up. Tried my old haunts of SYD, MEL and ADL - they match but no results. So that's 6 airports I tried with literally zero results, and half the time the (major international) airport wasn't even found. I know you're probably not focussing on my area but still not the most amazing first impression! At least a "coming soon" message would be an improvement.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

nnd 9y ago

A few suggestions: - since you are using Stripe, allow me to log in and pay without submitting my CC info over again. - when selecting home airports, how about prefilling it with the list of closest to you / busiest based on geolocation? The picker interface could be improved by allowing autocompletion as well.