Blog homeThis week I have been reviewing lots of websites.
I actually like doing reviews as when I started my company (2002) I mainly focussed on being a travel website usability consultant. Since then I have gone through phases of being a contract project manager delivering serious significant web projects for leading European travel companies and also reservation system changes (nightmare!) and also, as other people know, more recently being a reservation system supplier (TourCMS)
I like writing reviews (especially the “10 things” theme - where I will say it how it is 100%) but I know you lot out there are not really interested in them (unless you are the company I have reviewed - in which case - I know I get a massive increase in traffic!)
On this topic I should congratulate UK based web development company Zolv - I have always thought their work was pretty good - but within 24 hours of me having a go at the design of travel.co.uk they fixed a couple of the major issues that I highlighted. If you are doing a serious travel website project - ask them to pitch - I have no idea who they are (personally) but they have reacted exactly like I would expect a serious player to react to my constructive comments. Of course, it helps that I was right 
As long time readers will know, every month I offer the opportunity for you to tell me who I should write about. This could be a website review or just thoughts about the sector you are in…… so…. here is the opportunity again…. pitch below who I should write about….. trust me - as long as you don’t infer you are super-hero I will be kind….
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Alex, your reviews are very incisive and using the ten things format breaks it down into bite size chunks to evaluate.
Having launched a new website recently, we are really valuing the importance of stakeholder feedback from all areas of the businesss. The receptionist even stopped me in reception this week to give me an earful on what she thought it was lacking. Working so closely to a project means it is hard to distance yourself and act like a true customer so collating feedback has been very insightful, especially when combined with qualitative information obtained from web analytics sources.
Perhaps the new CheapHolidayDeals site is worth a gander?
PS. Maybe you’re running out of friends since this post started showing in Google. I think the title cuts off at an unfortunate point!
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=tour+cms+statistical+analysis
Hi Richard,
Yeah - that is quite a funny post title when chopped! Oh dear.
Do you want me to review your new site? ….. ask DJ or AW !
I can answer that one - definitely not! (for the moment anyway)
Wot! You prefer feedback from your receptionist to my feedback!
Hi Alex, the best way I can put this is that we have a number of ‘known knowns’ that we are currently working on. I think your review would add more value once we have eradicated all of these and you can help unvcover some of the unknowns.
Richard
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”
Where have I heard that before!
Hi Alex,
Thank you for your review of travel.co.uk and your subsequent recommendation of Zolv to your readership.
It’s always good to get feedback, particularly if we can act on it quickly and improve the User experience. It’s early days for travel.co.uk and there’s lots more good stuff to come for this site.
Olly Wenn
Managing Director
www.Zolv.com
Alex
As Richard says we are trying not to draw attention to ourselves at the moment.
I’m not being slopey shouldered here, but you can’t review the site (any site?) properly without understanding the business and organisational context behind it. Interestingly I believe that these types of issues are the underlying reasons behind most of the big user experience problems customers face online…
All of which points to why our launch happened with a bunch of known knowns…
Nevertheless nobody can stop you reviewing it if you want to!
Cheers
DJ