Hi,
I’m Abby Stephenson, manager of usability at delta.com.
We’d like your input on the organization of the Profile section of delta.com. We are going to restructure this area and one of the best ways to do that is to have our customers group items into groups that make sense to them.
That’s right – Delta’s usability team is making a big push to include customer input wherever possible.
The exercise is called a card sort and takes 15 minutes. Ten years ago the items you were sorting were written on index cards and placed into piles. Now, you still group items but instead of using index cards you drag and drop into piles using a web-based tool.
After we have enough participants we will aggregate all of the data to come up with a more intuitive organizational structure.
To participate, go to:
http://websort.net/go/Profile
Thanks in advance for you participation!
Abby Stephenson
Manager, Usability
delta.com & self-service
October 19th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Wow, this is interesting.
October 20th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
This really is a cool new way to submit information ! Nice job Delta ! Just need to work on keeping your flights on-time and your planes in good condition.
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:41 am
[...] found at the Delta Airlines Blog that they were looking for help for usability testings. As Abby Stephenson, manager of usability at [...]
October 22nd, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Hi, I have a couple of issues/suggestions.
1. I use mozilla Firefox as my browser and I notice that when searching and flight criteria the dates changes back to default settings (usually a week apart). Very frustrating when I have to go back a re-inter all the info again because I lost the original dates I started with when searching for flights.
2. Once I book a flight, it would be VERY helpful if I could “click” a button labeled “Add this flight to your calendar” and have the system automatically add it to Outlook.
October 24th, 2007 at 12:38 am
Allow me to second profman262′s comments. It would be great to be able to download my flights to my calendar (my company currently uses Outlook 2003).
United and Northwest are two airlines that offer calendar downloads (Northwest also offers a calendar download for online check-in, complete with link to the PNR within NWA.com — very smart). The Hilton Hotel group also provides calendar downloads for reservations at their various hotel chains. A new travel itinerary provider, TripIt.com, supports the iCal app for download to Outlook 2007, Google’s calendaring app, etc.
October 25th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
One of the frustrations I have with your website is that you display flights as business class on certain transatlantic flights such as ATL-MAN. This has always been BusinessElite why are you now changing certain aircraft to the domestic 767-400 on transatlantic flights and selling the seats as business class. These are domestic first and fall far short of the modern standards of international business class. You either need to stop selling them as business or post a huge sign informing passengers that they are not Business Elite seats. Otherwise you run the risk of customers moving to other airlines , just as you are getting on your feet.
October 26th, 2007 at 9:03 am
First of all – I want to say thanks to everyone who participated in the card sort. We had 75 participants which is awesome!
As for the download to calendar feature request, we are already working on this and you can look for it near the end of November. (with a couple other enhancements as well).
October 26th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
I’m still waiting for the drop down menus to be fixed for Safari users. Why do they not work?
October 27th, 2007 at 1:08 am
I would like to see better information regarding aircraft configuration, such as seat pitch, degree of recline, width, etc. for ALL seats, not just business elite. Based on that information, I can better prepare for especially long flights.
October 28th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
I just have 2 requests:
- Online check-in for international flights
- Ability to add delta partner airlines frequent flyer number to reservation
Both of my suggestions have already been implemented by at least one of your Sky Team partners.
November 5th, 2007 at 12:59 am
Why can’t I add a Skymiles number via delta.com before I check in? My company frequently buys tickets for me, and it would be great to be able to access my reservations via my Skymiles login instead of always looking up the confirmation number. Also, you should allow the same service for those wishing to give a FF number from Delta’s partner airlines. As it stands now, one needs to make a phone call to customer service to accomplish either of these tasks greater than 24 hours out, which is a waste of time for the customer and a waste of resources for Delta. NWA.com and Continental.com allow all this! Thanks!
November 5th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Abby,
Cheers to the work your team has been doing on Delta.com. I have especially enjoyed reading about the multivariate testing.
I have one question: Have you tested the implications of your pop-up window date picker against a css/javascript version? By css/javascript version, I am referring to the similar variations found on travelocity, expedia, hotwire, and kayak.
I suspect that the delayed load time and ‘lost window’ effect users experience when they click outside the picker increase your bounce rates and am curious if the data exists to confirm or dispute.
Best,
Winston
November 21st, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Single link to plan a new reservation after navigating away from the home page.
After I’ve left the home page of the delta.com site, I find it difficult to get back to reservations. For instance, after navigating to another section (e.g. current itinerary), it takes several steps to get back to reservations. 1) Planning & Reservations menu, 2) Plan a flight, 3) Online reservations, 4) Reservations. I would think that getting to the form to make a new reservation would be easy to find. I suppose I could click the Delta chevron and go back to the home page, but I never seem to remember that option when I need it.
November 21st, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Abbey,
Thanks for the efforts to improve user experiences of delta.com.
Please add mileage and MQM info for every flight in the flight planning area. I have to buy the ticket to see it when “Searching by Price”, or I can see it just before buying the ticket if I select “Search by Schedule” and select all the flights I need.
But, it would be better to have mileage and MQM info along with flight times, equipment, etc…, as part of the decision process before this point. I have often noticed only a minimal difference in price for higher MQM flights so I think you’re also missing out on that revenue.
Also, why is it that choosing “Search by Price” returns a predominantly different set of available flights than “Search by Schedule”? If I ask for roundtrip mco/ord for Dec 10th, at 3pm I see a set of flights available. If I choose “Search by Schedule” at the top of the page, the very same flights in the 3pm timeframe are no longer shown?!?!?! In fact, not only are the flights *in my schedule* gone but the routing seems really screwy. Instead of the direct flights available, on Delta, through “Search by Price”, I now go through Newark!?!!?!? What’s up with that? Why isn’t the original flight set available just restricted down to those that are closer in scheduling to my request?
Thanks,
KWL
November 25th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
abby – great to hear that the ics download/add to calendar functionality is coming soon.
can you look at how you label stuff like redeeming rewards? I feel like i have to search for 5 minutes everytime i want to book something with my skymiles…
don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them, but the 37signals (basecamp dev’s) guys do GREAT at labeling things…check them out!
November 27th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Flying weekly, there are two items I need quickly – making reservations and checking in. The later is a problem for me, most. Often after login, as the home page is loading, I select Itineraries, the page errors and states DONE at the bottom. HOME button is gone and you have to refresh. When you do get there, you still need to check-in, select print, print again and often the PC prompts to print. All of this on a slow workstation in the lobby.
Skinny the pages and streamline the process.
Tks
December 4th, 2007 at 4:06 am
I find the sales pitch, ” low fare Guarantee” just that a pitch.
I can do better booking the same flight most of the time with EXPEDIA.COM including what % they add on.
Is this what Delta calls customer service and appreciation?
Why can’t they give loyal customers the good deal?
December 13th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
business class travel…
Nice, but I think it is sometimes not enough to get it complete….
December 13th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
If you would like to improve delta.com, speed it up. It’s too slow compared to the competition. Looking up flights and connections takes too long in the search mode. Please speed up your server and database so that searches for flights is faster.
February 3rd, 2008 at 12:39 am
Before adding more features, fix the things that need fixing. For example, the bug with page load when we click “itineraries and check-in” on the left side before the page has fully loaded. (IE 6 and IE 7). That causes the page to freeze, and to get to itineraries I have to go to the drop down menu, travelling & checkin/itineraries & check-in, wait for that page to load, then proceed from there. This bug has been around at least for the better part of a year.
Also the problem with how, on my personal computer, when I return to delta.com after a few hours, (launching a new browser window after the old one had been closed) it shows me as logged in, lets me navigate two or three pages deep before suddenly deciding that I have to log in again, forcing me to stop the booking I was doing and spend a few page loads to log in and get back to where I was.
Both of these problems have been confirmed by other users on other machines. Once those are fixed, you can make it easier for us to modify a flight once we’ve gotten most of the way through the booking process and have selected/priced both flights. Currently I have to go back to the start page and change things there.