Pushing Limits, one step at a time | Pushkar Gaikwad » Indian Web Space

Why I love IXIGO as compared to other travel sites and why usability and design matters

Pushkar Gaikwad — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:34:36 +0000

In the past 3 months I have traveled a lot and is planning to travel more, on 7th February, I will be at entrepreneurship summit which will be held at IIT Bombay, now for such travels, I normally look at all the top 4-5 travel sites to find the cheapest hotels and flights, though after using them couple of times, let me assure you, there is no price difference between any, so here is my tip to other guys to save some money and Time, stick to one OTA site and they will help you to get more concessions in long run as old customer.

Now to the Post Topic – why on the web, Design and usability matters specially when you are in competitive field, Online Travel Agents and Hotel booking is a low margin, cut throat businesses with way too many players playing volume game trying to lure the same set of customers chasing limited amount of money, this is where I love ixigo, it is a no frill site with no ads, very clean design, no images and offers what the users wants. All other sites pushes something else too or shows ads or are not user friendly and ixigo certainly stands way apart from them.

I am of course no way associated with ixigo, just a regular user of it who feels others travel sites should work on usability and design of their sites to make them more responsive and interactive to retain the customer.

This is what is wrong with Indian Web Space

Pushkar Gaikwad — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:22:16 +0000

No Comments …

Review of Online Flight Ticket Booking Websites of India

Pushkar Gaikwad — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:49:46 +0000

I am not a frequent traveler but I do spend good time when buying a plane ticket on various online travel and Flight ticket booking websites in India so I felt to write a review about them from a “users” point of view to help first timers. I have only reserved air tickets with them so I cannot comment on any other service of theirs like hotel booking. If you want to read a professional albeit older review, you can check it here

(Below sites are not listed in any particular order)

DO read My Opinion at the end of the article too.

1. Yatra – Probably the biggest OTA site in India.

Good -
1. Has a really good starting user interface
2. Gives option for flights of +/- 2 days too

Bad -
1. The Display results are not shown properly, it can be improved
2. The number of results for my flight were certainly less as compared to other sites

2. Ixigo

Good -
1. Has excellent user interface, certainly the best among all sites
2. The rates were probably the cheapest though it directly pulls raw data from the sites so doesn’t count insurance or

Bad -
1. Just a search engine so eventually you just need to buy the ticket from the airline website but I don’t think this is a problem

3. Makemytrip

Good
1. Has a decent interface though can improve better
2. Shows Discount Prices too

Bad -
1. Results contains way too much information on a single page which makes it confusing for first timers

4. Cleartrip

Good
1. has a decent interface though can be improved as I can see lot of white space in results

Bad
1. For my queries (of various combinations) it certainly did not show many results and was certainly not the cheapest, may be because they added their own fees too in it.

5. Travelguru

Good
Didn’t found any as they are using ixigo flight search engine

Bad
Didn’t found any as they are using ixigo flight search engine

6. Ezeego

Good -
Didn’t found any as could not use the site

Bad
1. I am still trying to understand why they went with such domain name ?
2. The initial search interface needs improvement
3. While searching, I got apache tomcat error!

My Opinion about all these flight booking websites of India – Almost all the sites were showing same listings with same prices (with a difference of Rs 50 or 100 in some occasions) so I don’t think it matters much which site you are using for buying online plane ticket. Though its not a bad idea to open all of them and compare the results, it doesn’t take more than 5 mins to do this anyway. You may want to look at ixigo alone if you are in a hurry as I have seen it showing maximum possible flights with minimum fare.

Disclaimer – I am in no way associated with any of them and the opinions stated above are purely my observations and views.