When a few hundred lines of javascript could equal $100 MM

http://garry.posterous.com/when-a-few-hundred-lines-of-javascript-could

by zg • 14 years ago

53 32 14 years ago

garry.posterous.com

rrreese• 14 years ago

I find expedia.com to be equally terrible in this regard. In fact I have found that most travel oriented websites suffer from extremely poor UX, be they hotels, airlines, bus or train services.

I can understand the smaller hotels or bus companies, but there is no excuse for the larger players. The article is a bit presumptive in the cost, but it has to be affecting their bottom line.

henrikschroder• 14 years ago

I've been using hotels.com for many years now and they've actually gotten better and better during that time. Not as good as you might like, but still. :)

dbcooper• 14 years ago

Why on earth would someone abbreviate million as MM?

zalew• 14 years ago

it's a financial notation, which bothers me too.

heretohelp• 14 years ago

Pretty standard/common practice.

When discussing certain quantities, including money, it's common to use MM such as $100MM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix#Similar_symbols_in_ab...

lookingsideways• 14 years ago

Is this just a standard/common practice in America? I have yet to see it used anywhere else but then I am primarily exposed to UK/European news sources.

cabalamat• 14 years ago

> Pretty standard/common practice.

It's a common practise, but it's not a standard AFAIK. It's from latin mille which means 1000, so M=1000, and MM=1000000.

Unfortunately there is also a much more widely used international standard where k=1000 and M=1000000, so the M/MM forms are to say the least, confusing, and ought to be scrapped.

jarek• 14 years ago

You know, I've always thought of "MM" as "millions," plural, the same way "p. 55" is "page 55" and "pp. 55-56" is "pages 55-56." No idea if that's common usage/interpretation though.

simondlr• 14 years ago

When numbers get large, the more the little things start to matter. It must be exciting to see the changes happen live in front of you when you flick these 'little' switches.

patio11• 14 years ago

Not that any of my clients would do this (or, candidly, I'd fire them), but suffice it to say I've heard of places where you can make enemies by being a wee bit too effective at plucking low-hanging fruit like this.

I think 9 figures is likely to be an exaggeration but say it is 7 figures (or low 8 figures) per year, which is probably pretty easy to verifiably achieve. Large corporations being what they are, there's a high probability that someone will be personally identified with the decision made 5 years ago which a) you're suggesting reversing and b) you're suggesting cost the company ~$40 million dollars. This combination makes you a threat to that person's career. Likely as not, that person is a VP, and they didn't get where they are without having political capital and favors owed to them by people who also might have eventually risk getting demoted for gross incompetence if that were possible to do with "mere numbers." So you have to watch your back.

I once had a consulting proposal where I suggested that a process change could improve outcomes by let's call it $X0 million (and I was charging $X0k). Apparently a VP had sponsored the current process, at a cost of $X million, and he was directly in the line of signatures required to get the consulting gig approved. That ended that.

Startups/small companies aren't immune to this sort of pathology but you tend to get a lot less of it in my experience.

nswanberg• 14 years ago

Gerald Weinberg discusses this problem in his "Secrets of Consulting", somewhere after proclaiming "it's always a people problem." One is hired as a consultant, and so one thinks the best approach is to recommend a change that likely achieves the best possible outcome for the client.

But in accepting this, the client would have to acknowledge the existence of this problem and all its potential consequences.

If I remember correctly, his recommendation is for a consultant to only improve matters by, say, 10%, making the client look good for hiring a consultant, making the consultant look good for delivering, and, what seemed to me just a happy side-effect, benefiting the client's organization.

The alternative, I suppose, is for the consultant to move on to greener pastures, and for the organization to see a 0% gain.

aaronblohowiak• 14 years ago

I've been on projects that have chosen failing in an acceptable way rather than succeeding in a non-dogmatic way, and I've promptly left those organizations.

That said, many new contractors seem not to realize that their primary job (no matter what is on the paper) is to make the person that is signing the checks look good.

simmosn2• 14 years ago

My main gripe about the vast majority of travel websites is the complete lack of an "anywhere" option in the destination field. Sometimes I have a week off work, a set amount of cash and don't necessarily care where I go. I just want to see all possibilities for destinations/flights etc. I think SkyScanner is the only site I've seen this option on.

trin_• 14 years ago

oh yes! i just want to set a list of departure locations, a range of days (3-6) and a maximum cost. i dont care if i use the train a plane, a ferry or even a bus just get me somewhere interesting! :)

ed209• 14 years ago

You should try http://adioso.com/

mtr• 14 years ago

Have you seen http://www.kayak.com/explore/ ?

batista• 14 years ago

A "first world problem" if I ever saw one...

scarmig• 14 years ago

Not to derail the thread, but I think the entire "first world problem" meme, though useful in that it reminds us of our relative privilege, isn't totally fair to either the people experiencing the problem or to the people solving it.

First world problems are still problems. And the existence of people experiencing much worse problems doesn't mean those first world problems are not worth solving. Indeed, virtually any problem could be considered not worth solving if you can identify anyone anywhere in the world in a worse off situation. Typing in a couple words and having a machine return documents automatically based on the input isn't a solution to a real problem, because people exist in East Palo Alto who are functionally illiterate. Finding a cure for Alzheimer's isn't a solution to a real problem, because a supermajority of people in Zimbabwe die decades before they might even get it. It's all a matter of degree.

And if you buy into market economics, it's not even clear that focusing on first world problems is a detriment to solving other problems. If the parent spends 10 minutes buying a plane ticket instead of 2 hours because of the implementation of an "everywhere" option, that creates a consumer surplus that could very well be worth a couple hundred dollars. Flyers can be routed to places on planes that are underutilized, reducing GHG emissions by a meaningful amount (which is incredibly valuable for residents of developing nations). Hundreds of thousands (millions? I don't know the market size) of person-hours could be saved. Some of that value inevitably would trickle down to people with graver problems.

tomhoward• 14 years ago

As another commenter mentioned, this is exactly what we're building at Adioso (YC W09).

It turns out it's very hard to do for reasons mostly to do with decades-old technology and business conventions in the travel industry. This is why it still barely exists, even though so many travellers want it.

But we're making good progress. Stay tuned.

sjaakkkkk• 14 years ago

For people in Europe check http://www.qfly.com

anamax• 14 years ago

> My main gripe about the vast majority of travel websites is the complete lack of an "anywhere" option in the destination field.

Next you'll be wanting "somewhere new" and "somewhere fun".

simmosn2• 14 years ago

"somewhere new" - sounds good, keep track of cities I've previously booked flights to and exclude these from my results

joedev• 14 years ago

http://www.google.com/flights

Select: departure airport, departure date, and return date (optionally price range). Do not choose a destination.

See: a map of destinations with price labels shown for major cities.

Set: the max price and see possible destinations fade away.

Click: on a destination dot on the map and instantly get details of available flights.

All without pressing a single "submit" button and without entering a single destination.

akx• 14 years ago

Trying to select Helsinki as departure airport: "Sorry, locations outside the US are currently not supported."

Ah well.

jackshepherd• 14 years ago

I work for an airline and recently redesigned the flight search. Saw 10% increase in movement to next stage of the funnel.

I still don't feel like I can say 'increased turnover by £70million' in good faith though.

There is a limited market out there. For a small business a 10% uplift in conversion really = 10% more revenue. The same isn't necessarily true for a blue chip.

danielharan• 14 years ago

A 10% revenue can drive more than 10% increase in profits.

Sounds like you're doing a fine job of following patio11's advice (getting close to the money). Hope that works out for you! :)

mwexler• 14 years ago

While I admit the form reset is annoying, I don't see where the author shows any evidence that this usage pattern happens enough to make a difference.

Sure, when N gets large, every little bit helps. But if that behavior pattern only happens rarely, then changing it is unlikely to make much impact.

For all we know, their testing might have shown that folks who are planning trips between 2 options (flight to Vegas, no hotel needed, vs. flight to LA, hotel needed) wanted the form to reset so they didn't have to keep swiping and typing over leftover text in the fields. The frequency of usage patterns, weighted by their value to the business, would be a useful guide.

I'm not saying that the recommended change is the right or wrong thing to do, but I am saying that some data would really help back up any claims over size of impact. Otherwise, it's a good finding ruined by a totally exaggerated headline.

swalsh• 14 years ago

Hipmunk has an amazing interface, but I have yet to actually use it to purchase a flight. Quite often I find better deals elsewhere. I really want to use it exclusively, but I just don't trust it to have the best data yet.

When a few hundred lines of javascript could equal $100 MM

Related Stories