Ask HN: Please help with feedback on my app (Adioso for vacations)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406173

by wriggler • 15 years ago

6 11 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I finished an app (www.sunscanner.co.uk) a few days back after 2 weeks hard at work that that tries to address the problem of "I've got a week and amount X to spend for vacation, where can I go?". A lot like Adioso, or Kayak Explore.

I'd love some feedback on it from the HN community because I'm frankly at a loss as to what to do next. I spent $30 to advertise on Stumbleupon last week, obviously 300 users isn't a lot but the bounce rate (75%+) told me it's not really hitting the right note.

Grateful for any thoughts and constructive criticism.

dclaysmith• 15 years ago

Looks nice and definitely a site I would use. My thoughts:

* Include more airports (US).

* You state your problem is "I've got a week.." but your UI forces you to supply a relatively broad, non-specific date range. I would use it for "I have next weekend free" or the "3rd week in April free". I think a more traditional date picker option would be better here.

Good luck!

bmelton• 15 years ago

Not to take away from your comment, but my use case is quite the opposite.

I have a few weeks vacation a year, and I don't particularly care WHEN I take them. What matters most is getting the best experience without getting raped on fees.

I was just posting about it elsewhere, but we did a private island campsite in Lower Saranac Lake for a week. It was cheap, and during the cooler start of the season (my kind of weather) and cost almost nothing to be up there for a week. That is the sort of vacation for me.

wriggler4• 15 years ago

Thanks for the advice, will look at options for being more specific on dates - although I suppose what I am really trying to offer here is an opportunity to see the absolute best prices on packages for those who have flexibility around their travel dates.

Thanks again!

destraynor2• 15 years ago

Hey Wriggler,

I wouldn't base too much on that poor bounce rate. What you need is to target UK folks who are actively looking for holidays, I'm not sure Stumbleupon is a great way to do this.

Here's my thoughts UI wise

1. You need to learn more about your market, or maybe you already know this but have yet to put it into practice.

Start with one particular user, let's say John. John is an Adwords guy in Google. He is 28 and wants to go on a summer trip with his girlfriend. By an exercise left to the reader John has found your site. John needs to go away in August as that's when downtime is for his team, and he's hoping spend about £400 or thereabouts, though he will pay more for a better place.

Based on John alone, here are a few random thoughts.

1. It's a bit funky to drag end of the slider on top of another just to say "August". Also I think you should consider handling custom date ranges.

2. Sliders aren't a great mechanism in my opinion, as they don't tell you what you're missing out on. Possibly a histogram behind them would help. (See Year or Price on this page http://www.carzone.ie/ to see what I mean)

3. People don't book package holidays in isolation. John should be able to input "10th of August for 7 nights, less than £600" and then send this to his girlfriend, or post it to Facebook, or do whatever so that John and his group can make a decision. (This is especially true for package holidays)

4. Ditch the sliders (hey I said these thoughts were random). You must realise your slider for selecting stars was a bad idea when you were coding it.

5. Spent more time on designing your search results page. Basically when someone clicks the little bubble and gets a list of 5 packages, they inevitably have to bounce into and out of each of them to assess them. This isn't a great experience. The more info you can offer up front the better.

Overall great job, I think you've done some good work, and the stuff I've wrote about is relatively minor in comparison to the significant challenge of getting the traffic you need.

Best of luck, Des

wriggler4• 15 years ago

Thanks for the really insightful comments. UI-wise, I can probably fix most of these (e.g. dates).

As you say, the real challenge is getting the traffic. Stumbleupon users are far from my target, but at least a cheap way to see how people interact with the site. Google Adwords is most likely best for targeting ready buyers, but without an idea of the expected value of each customer, may be too expensive at this point.

Thanks again for taking the time to comment in such depth, appreciated.

notintokyo• 15 years ago

As an occasional stumbleupon user myself, I can say I'm not in the prime mood to book a vacation while using it. You probably prefer 10 people in vacation shopping mode than 300 people in lol I'm bored -mode.

ig1• 15 years ago

I like the idea, but going to your site I can't see your value proposition.

Your key differentiator is that you combine hotel+flight prices and you should make that more clear. Also it's not clear if your hotel prices are per person (with the assumption that there's two of you sharing) or per room.

I also agree with several of the other comments that you need to focus on your target audience much more. I'd recommend targeting 20-30 year olds without kids with disposal income who are looking for somewhere to go for the weekend.

wriggler4• 15 years ago

Hi Imran,

I think you're right that the value prop isn't made explicit enough at the moment - I could use adding some kind of introductory text to make it clear what the site is about, question is where to put it.

To me, the value proposition is that 1. it shows you the absolute cheapest dates to go somewhere if you have the flexibility and 2. that it shows great deals to places you might never have thought of otherwise - all much easier to spot because the results are mapped.

Good suggestion re. target audience. Assuming you're talking about changes to the site itself (rather than its advertising) I'd be interested to hear what changes or additions you would make to go about that, i.e. to specifically target the 20-30 singles demographic.

kirchhoff• 15 years ago

I think your site is neat. StumbleUpon users, in my experience, tend to show a high bounce rate (often not waiting long enough for a site to load), so they are not a good test case.

If you're still looking to advertise, Adwords might be a better bet, though your niche, as you know, is extremely competitive.

Aside from that, I have a couple of comments on the UI:

1. After clicking a price tag, you get an overlay which looks to be draggable (hand icon) but is not. It also exhibits a disconcerting zoom in/out effect when you zoom the map with the overlay visible.

2. Personally I think the logo wouldn't be totally out of place on a tub of margarine. No offense intended. Objectively, it doesn't match the colour scheme of the site.

wriggler4• 15 years ago

Ha, I actually thought the logo looks similar to a cheap hotel/motel chain I saw when I was in the States, can't remember its name but it's not a good association :)

Sadly this is the limit of my photoshop skills for the time being.

Will update my JS to close the overlay on a zoom event, thanks for the tip.

Ask HN: Please help with feedback on my app (Adioso for vacations)

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