10 things about CleanCruising.com.au [Cruise travel agent]

Time for another detailed review. Last one for a while (I will explain why in another post on Friday). This time lets look at CleanCruising.com.au - a cruise travel agency serving the Australian market.

5 things I like

Slider based filter search

Yeah - I know - sometimes us web people can get excited about small things like AJAX sliders - but I personally like them. [Although I haven’t undertaken any usability testing on sites with sliders - so not quite sure what non-expert users make of them].

You need quite a lot of product that is well spread out on the variable you are going to use for a slider otherwise they don’t make much sense. This site say they have 8300 cruises - which is probably sufficient to introduce sliders into the user interface.

This is nicely executed. They are using the Yahoo Slider if anyone else wants to do something similar.

Nice itinerary map and port slide show

Plot the cruise itinerary on a Google map. OK - I am not going to get super excited about a Google map….. but this is a nice example. Clicking on a “point” shows an image of the location. What makes this really special though is the port slideshow that is incorporated above the map:

I am not sure if this screenshot is very clear as it doesn’t capture the motion. The slide show automatically flips through an image per day….. what at the same time you can see the cruise route on a Google map.

Web cam of Southampton

The Southampton webcam is about 500m away from where I live - so I was quite surprised to see that it features on an Australian cruise website! This is pretty much the view I get out of my lounge window!

Looking at this summer sky - I can really see Australians wanting to come here……

http://www.cleancruising.com.au/port.asp?port=GBSOU

Cruise comparison tool

Nice side by side comparisons. Also have map based comparisons and the ability to graph the selected cruises against each other - and plot the star rating, daily rate, space ratio and crew ratio. If you are the kind of traveller who is going to spend many evenings analysing all the potential cruises you could go on - this is for you.

I am not completely convinced this is what users actually want (as the trade off is that the user interface becomes much more complex) but maybe it will work.

5 things I don’t like

This is a very nice site so finding 5 things I don’t like is a bit of a struggle - however I have found a few - but they are a bit “nit picky”.

Register to save cruises - too many form fields

This has too many fields for simple “save your cruises” function. Cut the fields back and let the user add additional data later, if they wish.

Some travel websites enable you to save trips without any registration at all (temporarily)……. (which they kind of do with their cruise comparison tool)

FAQs too wordy
[FAQ link]  

When doing a website review I always check the FAQs. Are they really the most common questions? Are they organised so that they can be navigated cleanly? Is there a FAQ search?

The first question answered in the FAQs is “why should I take a cruise holiday”. I will put money on it that their customer service team are very rarely asked that. Yes - they should sell the concept of cruising - but this should be in the overall website proposition - not as the first answer in the FAQs.

While I am on the FAQs - they are just too long - not only that - but some don’t answer the questions either.

Why is it so expensive for one person to travel alone?
Cruise lines base their rates on double occupancy. When travelling alone, you will be charged a supplement to cover the cost of the unsold berth in your stateroom. Please note that this fee only applies to the cabin rate. Taxes and airfare costs do not increase for this reason.

What they have said is “It is expensive because it is expensive”. That isn’t an answer! Why can’t cruise agents just be honest and say - its more expensive because as a solo traveller you are much less likely to spend money in the bars or to buy gifts for your travelling companions in the on-board shops - hence as a cruise line we earn less ancillary revenue from a single traveller and this has to be recouped with a single supplement.

AJAX a bit flakey

I had some problems with their complex AJAX in Internet Explorer 7. Twice I had to shutdown my browser. They have a few browser memory issues they need to resolve somewhere - but Firefox 3 is fine.

Maps vs Charts

Some people know I go sailing….. anyway, one of things I have learnt is the difference between a map and a chart. If anyone on a boat refers to a map then they deserve to keel-hauled. This site suffers as they use both “map view” and “chart view” on adjoining functionality.

The map view is a chart - while the chart view is a graph….. Ho hum. I guess this is a rather minority view to be upset by this labelling!

Calendar search

I don’t like the calendar search. It is so close to being great - but I think it somehow doesn’t really grab my attention very well. I struggled to understand what the rectangles mean:

This may be one example on their website where they have put technology before the user. They have done something because they can not because it adds value.

This wouldn’t have been such a problem but this calendar search has been given 75% of the real estate on the homepage. The rather more traditional form based search has a tiny amount of space in the top left hand corner - but it provides a much easier way of searching - and will be what users immediately understand how to use if coming to the site for the first time.

I would move the form search to centre stage on the homepage while they work out how to improve the calendar search.

Conclusion

Very nice site. I would be proud of this if I had built this. Certainly heads and shoulders above nearly all other agency websites. Could do with a few tweaks here or there - but nothing major. Thumbs up (and worth 5 minutes of your time to go and admire the AJAX sliders)

[Eagle eyed readers will notice only 4 things I like - I like the site - but nothing else stands out that would be worthy of your time to read about!]

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