3 ms·

Great letter by the UX guy, but I feel like Dustin completely missed the point. I know it's tempting to go the 37signals route and turn this isolated example o

Great letter by the UX guy, but I feel like Dustin completely missed the point. I know it's tempting to go the 37signals route and turn this isolated example of [what he considers to be] a poor website into a rant on how big businesses just don't get it, have bad taste, hate their customers, etc. The problem is that it's just not true. It might be true for AA, though I'm not convinced, but there are lots of examples out there of big profitable companies with terrible websites that have lots of customers who love them anyway. This whole fiasco feels like another case of a web professional viewing the world from inside their bubble. Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps you're just not in their target market? A lot of people who commented on the last post seem to really like them for frequent business travel...just because they don't cater to the casual market doesn't make them a bad company. On the contrary, focus is good. Oh, and this was my favorite line: Companies like this just float along, in the background of capitalism, exchanging goods and services for money. Yeah...turns out that exchanging goods and services for money is kinda the foreground of capitalism. You might think it's about having a pretty website...it's not.

potatolicious 17y ago
Personal anecdote here: I've never had any trouble booking a ticket through AA. Furthermore, the state of the American airline industry is such that nobody flies a "preferred" airline, everyone just flies whatever is cheapest. So, unless your website is actively chasing users away (which I doubt, it's not that poor), you'd be better served keeping your costs down than making some great Web 2.0 gesture of redesign.
- modoc 17y ago
  Well, maybe not everyone. My two favorite domestic carriers are Virgin America and JetBlue. If I can take one of them to wherever I'm going, I will. Now my liking them isn't based solely on their website design, however I invite you to check out http://www.jetblueairways.com/ http://www.jetblueairways.com/ and http://www.virginamerica.com/ http://www.virginamerica.com/ and compare them to AA.com. The attention to design and customer experience that they show in real life, on the flights, is also exposed on their websites, imho. They're also some of the few profitable US domestic airlines as far as I know.
  - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
    Virgin America isn't profitable yet, and JetBlue barely is.
  - madh 17y ago
    Southwest is profitable. (They did some intelligent fuel hedging.)

potatolicious 17y ago

Personal anecdote here: I've never had any trouble booking a ticket through AA. Furthermore, the state of the American airline industry is such that nobody flies a "preferred" airline, everyone just flies whatever is cheapest. So, unless your website is actively chasing users away (which I doubt, it's not that poor), you'd be better served keeping your costs down than making some great Web 2.0 gesture of redesign.

modoc 17y ago
Well, maybe not everyone. My two favorite domestic carriers are Virgin America and JetBlue. If I can take one of them to wherever I'm going, I will. Now my liking them isn't based solely on their website design, however I invite you to check out http://www.jetblueairways.com/ http://www.jetblueairways.com/ and http://www.virginamerica.com/ http://www.virginamerica.com/ and compare them to AA.com. The attention to design and customer experience that they show in real life, on the flights, is also exposed on their websites, imho. They're also some of the few profitable US domestic airlines as far as I know.
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  Virgin America isn't profitable yet, and JetBlue barely is.
- madh 17y ago
  Southwest is profitable. (They did some intelligent fuel hedging.)