11–20 of 36 posts
P.S: I'm not the author, I only found the article interesting when I found it on twitter.
Hi, My name is Hrush. I am one of Cleartrip's founders and I'd like to clarify how things actually work. Firstly, the "X seats left" feature is not an 'algorithm' at all. It is a simple count of the number of 'seats remaining' at a specific price point for a specific flight departure. In the example illustrated in the post, there is only a single seat left at a price point of Rs. 34,255. This does not mean that there…
Don't you agree that the user's perception of this UI is that fake scarcity tactics are being employed?
There's this super-budget airline in Australia, Tiger Airways, so budget that they skimped on training pilots and got shutdown for some time. Anyway, their website at some point had two hidden features: if you tried to book in a group it would charge you more per person (because you're depriving them of "credit card surcharge") AND just checking the price of a certain flight a certain amount of times (showing interes…
Hi, My name is Hrush. I am one of Cleartrip's founders and I'd like to clarify how things actually work. Firstly, the "X seats left" feature is not an 'algorithm' at all. It is a simple count of the number of 'seats remaining' at a specific price point for a specific flight departure. In the example illustrated in the post, there is only a single seat left at a price point of Rs. 34,255. This does not mean that there…
The screenshots in the article support your statement. However, don't you think this is practice grossly misleading? It's common, especially on low-cost flights, to gradually ramp up the seat price as the tickets are sold. Sometimes (and this seems to be such an example), this means no single seat costs the same as the next one sold - but that doesn't mean there are huge price differences between buying seat n and n+…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_management
We wanted to our users to be able see how long a price point is going to remain available. Our hope is that most users will be able to make better decisions about whether to book immediately or to wait a little longer.
With respect to whether the price differences are huge or not, the prices are going to be higher. Travel is an extremely price-sensitive category and India is an extremely price-sensitive market. So, in our opinion, this feature lets users make better decisions.
Since the button seems to be causing some confusion, we'll see what we can do to best improve it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The screenshots in the article support your statement. However, don't you think this is practice grossly misleading? It's common, especially on low-cost flights, to gradually ramp up the seat price as the tickets are sold. Sometimes (and this seems to be such an example), this means no single seat costs the same as the next one sold - but that doesn't mean there are huge price differences between buying seat n and n+…
Udo -- the practice of ramping prices up and down is called Yield Management and is a commonplace strategy for suppliers of perishable inventory such as airlines and hotels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_management We wanted to our users to be able see how long a price point is going to remain available. Our hope is that most users will be able to make better decisions about whether to book immediately or to wai…
> We wanted to our users to be able see how long a price point is going to remain available.
On a flight where every single seat represents a discrete price point, this information becomes dubious at best. What's more, the UI on your website makes the semantics of this very murky, culminating in unnecessary misunderstandings like this article.
To make it perfectly clear: I'm not suggesting there is anything wrong with your business practices. Instead, the fault lies with your user interface for not making the distinction clear between the number of seats available on the flight in general and the number of seats left at the current price point (which is almost ALWAYS equal to the number of seats the user has requested).
Hi, My name is Hrush. I am one of Cleartrip's founders and I'd like to clarify how things actually work. Firstly, the "X seats left" feature is not an 'algorithm' at all. It is a simple count of the number of 'seats remaining' at a specific price point for a specific flight departure. In the example illustrated in the post, there is only a single seat left at a price point of Rs. 34,255. This does not mean that there…
Relying on tooltips is probably a bad idea. Maybe change the button text to 'X seats at this price'. Don't make me think. :-)
On the bright side, be thankful for the good user feedback. I wish everyone who stopped using my product wrote a blog post.
Hi, My name is Hrush. I am one of Cleartrip's founders and I'd like to clarify how things actually work. Firstly, the "X seats left" feature is not an 'algorithm' at all. It is a simple count of the number of 'seats remaining' at a specific price point for a specific flight departure. In the example illustrated in the post, there is only a single seat left at a price point of Rs. 34,255. This does not mean that there…
Sounds like a minor usability problem has cost you a potential customer. The question is how many other customers have had the same problem but not bothered to write blog posts. Relying on tooltips is probably a bad idea. Maybe change the button text to 'X seats at this price'. Don't make me think. :-) On the bright side, be thankful for the good user feedback. I wish everyone who stopped using my product wrote a blo…
We've posted a more detailed explanation with screenshots and examples here: http://bit.ly/yP3muv
Someone on twitter mentioned that they had bought some flight tickets only because of this 'confusion' : https://twitter.com/#!/jayeshb/status/162512878287589377
Is that a one-off case because of confusion?
We've posted a more detailed explanation with screenshots and examples here: http://bit.ly/yP3muv
Your screenshot shows the tooltip visible, which aren't by default (as already noted by a couple of commenters already). Someone on twitter mentioned that they had bought some flight tickets only because of this 'confusion' : https://twitter.com/#!/jayeshb/status/162512878287589377 Is that a one-off case because of confusion?