Travel. Learn. Discover

When people ask me: What will you do if you come into a lot of money?

My answer is simple: I will travel far and wide!

There is something exhilarating about travelling and seeing places. It not only helps you discover the earth and its myriad ways but also helps you learn so much about the history, geography and other small things that seem so trivial and are yet so very important about every place we visit. We don't just discover the place, we learn more of our likes and dislikes, people and things that make us happy and other land and water choices that we make. It's unbelievable.

The Internet has opened up a very useful and resourceful place, not just for the producers of services but has also (with the advent of Web 2.0) opened up a space for travelogues and other travel blogs that are based on personal experiences and sharing the same in a community setting. This consumer-centric view of services that are made available makes the information a lot more reliable as people have already experienced the place, hotels, travel that are in discussion.

Ergo, I have decided to look up websites in the travel vertical. They are as follows:

From India: www.okatatabyebye.com (the name cracks me up as well!)

From Australia: www.austtravel.com.au (I haven't used many travel sites in Australia)

From the US: www.tripadvisor.com (This site is the reason I'm inspired to use travel sites in the first place.)

Go online the best way possible

Tripadvisor.com is known all over the world to be the 'mother of all sites' so to speak. It has a clean, informative yet interactive landing page and like oktatabyebye.com has most of the necessary information that include trip ideas, travel guides, reviews all above the fold. In web jargon, above the fold is the top part of the website that a user can see when they and on your website. Every visitor comes to your website with a goal: For example, honest hotel reviews. In both websites, the search box is placed above the fold and oktatabyebye has bold tags displayed right below it to entice the user and provide a search history of terms that the user might be interested in. On the other hand, austtravel alo has links above the fold on the right but there are way too many links which may distract/alter the reader's attention. The website however is a informative website rather than a travel community. All three sites also use simple sentence structures and adopt a conversational, friendly style of writing. While all three websites limit scrolling, one would notice that tripadvisor and oktatabyebye are community websites and will therefore have information updated more often by travellers who have something to say and review right after every trip.

Working with design

Of the three websites, tripadvisor wins on popularity grounds. It also goes to say that the design elements are excellent and the immaculate work of the web design shows: neat, scroll over reviews, good clarity images and good usability features. The use of images in oktatabyebye.com seem to be in the right places, thought I would have preferred that the 'travel picture for the day' found a spot above the fold. If you look more closely, you notice that the most important information retains its place right on top of the website. It has a whole list of travel blogs to follow (ones that keep up with the same theme), newsletter subscriptions and a travel photo gadget that changes everyday. These small nuances make the website very personal and reliable.

Page templates in tripadvisor seem to be of a very high resolution and good design but may take a long time to load for a user with limited bandwidth; austtravel on the other hand uses a clean and low resolution website that seems easy to load with stationery images and low interaction.

Scannability and Navigation

Scannability and navigation in case of oktatabyebye seems to be the best. It provides all limited but necessary information right on the landing page and helps the user navigate to other sections based on what he is looking for. The ability to navigate in the website and navigation to other external links hosted seems well thought out in all cases. While tripadvisor and oktatabyebye.com navigate the user to mostly in-website content, austtravel seems to use a lot of external links that help the user navigate to other related websites. This may be differentiated based on the objectives that each of the sites adopt: Community based vs. information portal.

Austtravel seems to have both the elements of linking. One, it uses hypertext efficiently as a pertinent part of the document and provides other additional links in the web page margin or right at the end of the page. Scannability in case of this site however leaves a lot to be desired. If we consider that on the web a reader follows a 'F' pattern, it is vital that all the most important information and links are be put right on top. The font-size in the website could be enlarged to improve scannability.

Writing to be read

It is said that the best place to start is at the beginning. Headlines, captions and subheads make reading a lot more interesting if you look at this as a whole-website point of view, you'll notice the following about the three websites:

Oktatabyebye.com

The domain name or the name of the website to me seems very interesting. It seems to me that is peculiar, weird and funny to use the words: ok, tata, bye in the name of a website! But what I can also tell you is this: In India, it is very common for people to use the phrase 'Ok, tata' to mean 'Goodbye, I'll see you soon!'

The name will not only help a particular savvy, niche audience to want to see the website but it also appeals to the masses. They will relate to the website because of it's name: A phrase often used by the junta (common man). What one can immediately notice is that there's a para that works as an introduction for the website: The online travel community for travellers to find and share personal travel experiences, honest hotel reviews, holiday travel ideas and travel advice on India destinations and cities.

Austtravel.com.au

This website is named the 'Australian Travel Emporium'. If the title as clear and easy to understand as is this one does not excite you much - the caption under it, definitely will: Australia's no. 1 resource for destination planning and travel reservations.

It is a site mainly for travel, tours and accommodation in Australia. Above the fold the website has quick links to the states in Australia on top and accommodation on the right. On scrolling below, there are a couple more booking and insurance quick links. When I evaluate the style of writing, it hits me almost immediately. This site seems like a report. Impersonal but states the facts.

Tripadvisor.com

I have used this website numerous times. If travel advice is what you're looking for, then this is THE website. As its grown through the years and has become more and more popular it has features worldwide. every country featured and information provided on the same is worth relying on. As it's caption says: 'Get the truth, then go.'

To immediately attract a reader's attention it says: Get advice from real travellers - more than 15,000,000 travellers from 190 countries planned trips this week. Such a large number of users sharing information makes the website an enviable source of information. The style of writing also moves from austtravel's factual presentation(though it makes for friendly reading) to a more user-based experience sharing mode.

Credibility

Overall, oktatabyebye seems to have the right element at the right place. Below the fold, you not only find external links to travelogues and maps but also find a community guidelines section. I find this a very necessary and important part of the website. This is where I love to evaluate web-writing. This section seems to be written like as if it were an indivual or a group(most likely who have a passion to travel) reaching out to readers not a large company that you as a user can never reach out to or get a hold of. The friendly, conversational style of writing makes you want to be a member and contribute to the growth and success of the website by sharing travel ideas, reviews, etc. People tend to overlook the guidelines and almost skip reading them as they are usually elaborate and long. I like that here they stick to 2 main guidelines around: what's important and what's not.

The website has an objective to drive a U2U kind of forum setup where the members of the community discuss, answer and provide solutions of various queries based on personal experiences. Therefore the few but important rules that are laid down enhance the credibilty of the site.

Tripadvisor's popularity must talk volumes about the credibilty of the website. Its reviews, travel ideas and discussions are reliable and gives you all the information you need. User reviews are the best in all sections.

Austtravel does not seem like the largest source of information to plan your trip: accomodation and bookings incuded. In case you don't know where to go the website enhances its credibilty by providing additional information sources for a user.

Writing to be found

The most important thing for a website is to be found. Tripadvisor does not need to be found anymore, it been around a while now and tops most search engine results. Keyword optimisation in this case seems top-notch and the familiarity of using this site has grown every year.

Oktatabyebye limits to searches of Indian cities and travel within India but does highlight the more important elements on the page. Austtravel uses hypertext well and usage of superlatives trigger a larger response for searches and may query a user right to the website.

While I have mentioned a few ways that these websites can be better under each criteria to write for the web, in terms of usabilty and writing for the web, I can summarize my evaluation by saying: Tripadvisor is probably the best in the business as it has the best usabilty and scannability characteristics in place, while Oktatabyebye and Austtravel, though with distinct objectives, can use many ways to improve usability and popularity: Font sizes, image clarity, keyword optimization, page template arrangements are the various aspects that can be looked into to engage readers better.

References:

Writing for the web by Jakob Nielsen, distinguished engineer; P.J Schemenaur, technical editor, and Jonathan Fox, editor-in-chief www.sun.com.