In a previous post, Josh mentioned that we’d added over 100 small enhancements to the site since January. We aren’t slowing down either. As one of the developers that’s working on delta.com, I thought it would be a good idea to explain some of these enhancements as well as provide a bit of insight into life “behind the scenes.”
Within the first six months I started working at Delta, I wanted to add flash components to our home page for numerous reasons. Last week I finally got to see that happen. Flash as a technology solution for content delivery has always been abused, especially with “intro pages” on sites and those animated banner ads all over the web. So why did I want to add flash to the home page?
Flash enables us more flexibility to provide a better experience to you when visiting the site. We built a reusable “engine” that facilitates better communication with you. The reason is that it takes into account what might be most relevant to you. So now all the messaging on the home page is delivered in flash (from the large photo and below until the footer).
“But it looks just the same! Where’s the increased relevance you told us about?”
That was exactly the point. We hope that the experience is better. In the past, if you searched for flights to Seattle on a search engine and followed one of the paid links, you were presented with an experience that didn’t respond to your search. During the test phase, we included the city you were searching for in the main message. In the area below “Airfare Deals” we provided the three lowest fares at that time going to the location you provided, based on your location as the departure point. If you clicked the link you were put directly into the process of booking and searching for that ticket. For me, it was the “killer application” on the home page. For many of us the biggest surprise was that it wasn’t as successful as we hoped. Maybe it wasn’t what you wanted, not knowing the airport codes (versus the city names), or that it was “below the fold” (meaning it was out of what could be seen without scrolling). The support is still there, it’s just deactivated.
There is one interesting story about this launch. As we prepared for the launch, I got the phone call asking me if I’d seen the home page. Not quite the call I was expecting at 3pm. Turns out when we did our preproduction move to get all the files that wouldn’t impact the site, we accidentally put out the new version with flash. I tried to finish the job while a couple other coworkers helped to prepare a back out. It worked out perfectly because within 30 to 45 minutes it was gone until Friday morning. That’s when we found out that line 56 was out of memory (see #6). There is also an issue depending on your version of the flash plug-in. Please visit the link and make sure it says Version 9,0,115,0. Yes its the most recent version available. I’ve updated our Browser Compatibility page to reflect the change.
This is just the start too! Last week we also added predictive text to the home page to make looking up destination airports much easier. We added it to Award Ticket at the same time. The previous week we updated our servers to reduce the size of pages at delta.com in order to speed up browsing the site (and there are more enhancements coming to speed it up even more).
If you are someone that just doesn’t like flash, I’ll make sure we add a preference panel to the site so you can turn it off on the site with the next face lift. For now, you can follow this link (it turns off flash on the home page for that visit).
So, what do you think?
drew
delta.com GUI Developer
April 17th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
One thing I’ve noticed on the website is the price for an itinerary once the itinerary selection is comprised. I don’t like the fact that Delta does not include the price for all passengers either on that page or on the purchase page. I have to go to the calculator on my computer to add fares together to get the total price which can get annoying. The homepage is nice though with the flash, as it is quick and efficient.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Flash is fine, I like some of the enhancements. However, does your site automatically fall back to non-flash when it encounters a low-speed connection? Unfortunately, not every place in the world has high-speed broadband. Sometimes it can be an absolute killer to use a flash site when you’re on a glacial connection. I travel quite a bit to Europe and Asia, even in the modern cities you still can encounter hotels whose idea of “high speed” leaves a lot to be desired. American Express seems to be one site that is able to switch modes painlessly.
One question: Do you benchmark your web site’s capabilities against your competitors? For example, NWA lets you do some things (like international check-in) that aren’t yet offered on Delta.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
I must say I really like the Delta website!!
As a former US Airways flyer switching to the Delta website was like moving from 1995 to well…today. I wish the partner domestic and international lounges were listed on the Delta website. That would make it much easier to know what lounges I am allowed to access as a Crown Room Club member as I am not yet a Sky Team Elite Plus member.
I would like to see a bit more effort concentrated on the mobile website. When booking a flight I would like to see the price for each segment as I am building my itinerary. I would also like the ability to change my seat assignment for existing reservations. This would in many cases save a call to SMS after I am upgraded and not near a computer.
Another error I occasionally get is when I click the Itineraries & Check In tap on the main screen it freezes and never loads the drop down list of itineraries. I then have to click Itineraries & Check In from the drop down menu at the top of the screen.
Thanks! :o)
April 18th, 2008 at 8:10 am
I like the Flash, because for the past year, I was not able to see most of the graphics and text on the main column (ie, center of the page…the left side has always worked fine). I pulled up http://www.delta.com last week, and voila…it worked! So two thumbs up from me.
I’ll echo Geoffrey’s comment about the Itineraries and Check-in tab. I have the same problem, but it occurs only if I click on it prematurely, before the entire page fully loads. If I’m patient, haha, then it loads properly.
But I think that overall, the Delta website is very impressive and asthetically-pleasing. There are still quite a few kinks to work out (do I even need to mention the award calendar?).
April 18th, 2008 at 9:24 am
If you use the menus at the top of the page, you need to click three times in order to get to planning a flight: Planning and Reservations Menu, (1) Plan a Flight, (2) Online Reservations, (3) Reservations. I know that planning a flight is on the main page, but if you aren’t on the main page, it takes too many clicks to plan a flight. The extra pages with information should be combined or should be at the top of the actual reservations page where you can type in the information you want for your flight (cities, dates, etc.)
April 18th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
At the moment the home page does not automatically “fail over” to a non-flash version when you are on a slow connection. It is however on the list of enhancements for the next update. We are also working on getting the home page as lightweight as possible. The updates won’t come all at once, but over the coming weeks you should start to see the home page load faster. We did see the error a week or two ago with the itineraries occasionally hanging and are in the last stages of testing the fix right now. You are correct that it only happens if you click on the itineraries tab before the page finishes loading.
golich17: Its interesting you bring up the lack of the total cost being displayed because that is a result of competitive analysis (aka benchmarking). This summer I’m part of the team rewriting our entire booking and award ticket applications. I’ll see what we can do about getting the total cost displayed as part of it.
cincyworldtraveler: We do support international check-in on delta.com. That was an enhancement that went live in early March. You can also check your free bags online, and within the next month you’ll be able to pay for some of your excess baggage as well.
DiscoPapa: Let me guess about the award calendar kink: the calendar shows SkySaver available but none show up on the available flights page?
Geoffrey: I don’t have a lot of information regarding the mobile site and what can and can’t be done. I know that the in regards to the price, we don’t have prices available for each leg. That’s the reason it isn’t provided.
jamiers: With all the testing we do, I’ve gotten in the habit of clicking the Delta logo in the top left so I can come back to the home page. I’ve found it to be the most efficient approach.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Drew, yes you are right. It seems that you have a better chance of the problem (showing SkySaver when there are none) on your 2nd/3rd/4th/etc. attempt at searching for an itinerary. Also, a huge issue being discussed (you can follow the discussion at FlyerTalk.com) is that Delta forces you to book most partner award travel over the phone, thus forcing you to pay the $25 fee (stupid fee to begin with). The online award calendar does not allow you to create anything more than a “simple” itinerary on either DL, CO, NW, or AF. For more multi-city itineraries, or travel involving other partners, you are forced to call DL and pay not only the over-the-phone booking fee, but also the $25 partner fee. The inefficiencies of the award calendar equates to making the individual pay additiona (and unnecessary) booking fees. How is that fair?
April 18th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Drew, I realize there are not specific prices per leg. What I was referring to was the price that is displayed next to the outbound and return itinerary options much like it is displayed on Delta.com. Currently on the mobile version of delta.com no prices are displayed at all until you select both the outbound and return segments. I know the fares are based on roundtrip travel but it is quite useful when I make a reservation.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Nice to hear that these enhancements are forthcoming. Haven’t flown DL internationally since Feb., so didn’t know that int’l check-in was available.
I agree that it would be truly awesome if the FF award search included all airline partners. Is it a limitation of the web site or the ticketing systems? I would think that it would save DL some $$$ to link as many airline partners as possible into the award search. Seems like everytime I book int’l FF travel, I have to spend an hour on the phone with an agent, because all the DL SkySavers are gone but they generally find something on the partners that can’t be found on the web site. I’m in the call center business and I know that having an agent on the line for an hour is not cheap or efficient.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 am
Why can’t you guys fix clearly BROKEN parts of the web site, like the award calendar before you go making it look more pretty? The Flyertalk forum for Delta is riddled with complaints of problems with the DL web site. Please fix these major problems before adding fluff.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
During a typical session, I’d like to generally:
* Check my itineraries.
* View my SkyMiles history.
* View this week’s Web Fare Specials.
* View one or more promotions.
This used to be quite simple: right-click each link and open it in a new tab. All content could then be easily read and there’s no need to remember to go back and read about that other special.
With the flash-embedded links, though, it appears that opening one page at a time, then going back to the main page for more content is required. So I often just end up skipping (or forgetting about) the specials and promotions while going through the site more sequentially.
Any way to put this functionality back into the flash panel?
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Another thing to remember is that a lot of corporate IT departments frustratingly don’t allow Flash (or at least not version 9). Those who do tend not to upgrade to the latest version (and Adobe requires an administrator account to install the upgrade). It’s a pain when I have to wait til I get home to book my travel.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:39 am
I have been experiencing terrible usability issues over the past 4 to 5 weeks. This is occurring on all of my pc’s at my home and on my notebook when I travel. I think that comes close to eliminating my end of the issue. This blog site (subdomain) works fine. However, plain old delta.com acts like a slug. A trace route report shows good performance until arriving at atlanta.savvis.net where it reports the destination net is unreachable.
Today I tried the very unscientific “click and count” test with other airline sites. Everything averages in the 3-5 second range to fully load. delta.com may go 15 seconds before timing out with an interruption message, or it may return a “text” page, with no css or flash or other such formatting. Once in a while the home page will load in reasonable fashion, and the problem will begin when you go any further.
Very frustrating to use…and no real place to go to seek help.