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Great blog post and great perseverance. But I prefer Skyscanner's 'whole month' search. I can see flight prices for the whole month to a whole country on a sin

by drsim 14y ago

Great blog post and great perseverance. But I prefer Skyscanner's 'whole month' search. I can see flight prices for the whole month to a whole country on a single screen. With yours I see seven days at a time. And it takes an age to see the next seven! I'm sure it's a difficult problem getting accurate 'fuzzy' flight info fast, but Skyscanner have it cracked and have done for some time. I like the idea of your somewhere warm search, but again it's dead in the water if it takes 30 seconds to start returning results. Just because you offer powerful search doesn't mean you can sacrifice speed. You've still lost my attention in spite of the novelty.

tomhoward 14y ago
Thanks for the kind comments. Regarding speed/performance - did you see the part of the post where we explain this?
- drsim 14y ago
  Yeah, it does sound tough and kudos for pushing through. You should really dissect Skyscanner though. I've just done a search for London to Denmark in April on both your site and Skyscanner. Skyscanner: I'm shown all available cities and their best price in < 2 seconds. Click through to the entire month grid where I can play around with out and in flight dates in a nice compact chart. Best price Copenhagen £26 on the 24th. Adioso: The search snaps to Denmark, AU (can you weight destinations by population?). The correction option you offer is nice though. It takes around 10 seconds to start returning prices and 30 seconds until complete. Once I select a destination I'm not a fan of your results. The slider to see more than 7 days really gets on my nerves. Having to wait again after I thought I was done with waiting is exhausting. When I want to select a return flight I then have to decide from three options: I have to think too much. With the Skyscanner grid I can play and see 'okay Wednesday to Sunday seems to be cheapest, I was going to go Friday to Monday but I'll stay longer'. Best price Copenhagen £26 on the 16th. I'm impatient especially when shopping around for the best price. I really think unless you achieve the performance comparable to the Skyscanner guys you'll be dead in the water. You have something here and have clearly achieved a lot. But essentially I think you've overstretched and sacrificed a very important quality: speed and UX.
- jaggederest 14y ago
  Explaining it doesn't help your users deal with it ;) I'd suggest making it a bit more asynchronous, or returning whatever results you can first. Allow people to save searches, perhaps, and come back to them in a few minutes.
  - tomhoward 14y ago
    Explaining it doesn't help your users deal with it Didn't say it did :) We just know it's a problem - by far our biggest problem - and the one we're most determined to fix.

by drsim 14y ago

tomhoward 14y ago

Thanks for the kind comments. Regarding speed/performance - did you see the part of the post where we explain this?

drsim 14y ago
Yeah, it does sound tough and kudos for pushing through. You should really dissect Skyscanner though. I've just done a search for London to Denmark in April on both your site and Skyscanner. Skyscanner: I'm shown all available cities and their best price in < 2 seconds. Click through to the entire month grid where I can play around with out and in flight dates in a nice compact chart. Best price Copenhagen £26 on the 24th. Adioso: The search snaps to Denmark, AU (can you weight destinations by population?). The correction option you offer is nice though. It takes around 10 seconds to start returning prices and 30 seconds until complete. Once I select a destination I'm not a fan of your results. The slider to see more than 7 days really gets on my nerves. Having to wait again after I thought I was done with waiting is exhausting. When I want to select a return flight I then have to decide from three options: I have to think too much. With the Skyscanner grid I can play and see 'okay Wednesday to Sunday seems to be cheapest, I was going to go Friday to Monday but I'll stay longer'. Best price Copenhagen £26 on the 16th. I'm impatient especially when shopping around for the best price. I really think unless you achieve the performance comparable to the Skyscanner guys you'll be dead in the water. You have something here and have clearly achieved a lot. But essentially I think you've overstretched and sacrificed a very important quality: speed and UX.
jaggederest 14y ago
Explaining it doesn't help your users deal with it ;) I'd suggest making it a bit more asynchronous, or returning whatever results you can first. Allow people to save searches, perhaps, and come back to them in a few minutes.
- tomhoward 14y ago
  Explaining it doesn't help your users deal with it Didn't say it did :) We just know it's a problem - by far our biggest problem - and the one we're most determined to fix.