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The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm

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Re: The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm

#21

Post by philjohn »

hrush wrote: post #14
Udo wrote: post #12

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…

Perhaps "1 seat left at this price" would be a less confusing.

Re: The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm

#22

Post by micheljansen »

This is arguably an application of so-called "Dark Patterns"; the black hat of UX design. The red colour, the suggestive copy are all chosen to invoke a sense of urgency. A List Apart has a good article on the subject: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dark-patterns-deception-v...

Re: The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm

#23

Post by hrush »

philjohn wrote: post #21
hrush wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Perhaps "1 seat left at this price" would be a less confusing.

Yep. We agree that we need to work on improving the design of the feature and we will be doing just that. “X seats left at this price” is a better label, but may be too long to fit for the way it is currently designed, so we will need to think about how we can best convey the information better.

Re: The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm

#24

Post by sushantsharma »

hrush wrote: post #10

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…

Can you give an example (perhaps with a screenshot) where cleartrip shows more than one seat left when someone searches for one ticket?

Edit: Just saw another person's reply that it does indeed happen sometimes.

Re: The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm

#25

Post by breckinloggins »

hrush wrote: post #10

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…

In my opinion, you're skating on thin ice with this explanation. I have no doubt that this is exactly how the feature works. However, you're posting in a community full of entrepreneurs and marketers. We KNOW that presenting scarcity (real or not) is a great way of influencing the buy decision.

You will never convince anyone here that the wording of the badge wasn't deliberately designed to promote the feeling of scarcity.

What I'm suggesting, however, is that this isn't really a bad thing. It's a little tough to call you guys out on the practice of optimizing the site for sales... we'd all be very hypocritical if we did that (since the next popular article on HN is just as likely to be a treatise on the fine art of A/B testing the wording on a "try it now" button).

I think what everyone is asking for is just that you say "yes, our tests showed this wording worked very well to increase purchases. However, perhaps we went a little too far. We'll reword the button."

What you SHOULDN'T expect is for any of your peers on this site to honestly believe the connotation of your explanation, which seems to be "the badge OBVIOUSLY represents the number of seats left at this price, instead of seats left on the flight. But since a few people have this weird interpretation, we'll change it just for you."

But you know what... I suspect it's all moot. I'm sure the way it's worded now ultimately generates the highest sense of urgency in the customer, but "1 left at this low price" probably generates a similar urgency.

Re: The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm

#26

Post by hrush »

breckinloggins wrote: post #25
hrush wrote: post #10

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…

In my opinion, you're skating on thin ice with this explanation. I have no doubt that this is exactly how the feature works. However, you're posting in a community full of entrepreneurs and marketers. We KNOW that presenting scarcity (real or not) is a great way of influencing the buy decision. You will never convince anyone here that the wording of the badge wasn't deliberately designed to promote the feeling of sca…

To be perfectly honest, we didn't test for differently worded labels at all. So, we'd be outright lying if we said what you're asking us to.

We agree that we need to work on improving the design of the feature and we will be doing just that. “X seats left at this price” is a better label, but may be too long to fit for the way it is currently designed, so we will need to think about how we can best convey the information better.

Re: The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm

#27

Post by breckinloggins »

hrush wrote: post #26
breckinloggins wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, you're skating on thin ice with this explanation. I have no doubt that this is exactly how the feature works. However, you're posting in a community full of entrepreneurs and marketers. We KNOW that presenting scarcity (real or not) is a great way of influencing the buy decision. You will never convince anyone here that the wording of the badge wasn't deliberately designed to promote the feeling of sca…

To be perfectly honest, we didn't test for differently worded labels at all. So, we'd be outright lying if we said what you're asking us to. We agree that we need to work on improving the design of the feature and we will be doing just that. “X seats left at this price” is a better label, but may be too long to fit for the way it is currently designed, so we will need to think about how we can best convey the informa…

I was thinking about that. What about an asterisk? Then you could make the tooltip the asterisk expansion. On the bottom of the page, you could also give the expanded version.

This might be the best of both worlds, because you can keep the wording but you also let people know there's more information about what it means.

EDIT: Another idea...

So, you could make the price plus the "x left" be a single graphical unit, thus strongly tying the "x left" to the price, rather than to the seat selection. Then, right below that in a light font, you could say something like "12 left from $y to $z".

So, as an ASCII art example: http://pastebin.com/tS8MPeXK

Re: The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm

#28

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

plaes wrote: post #13
Maxious wrote: post #6

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…

There's at least one site I know that raises prices when you are re-visiting the specific flight (via cookie tracking).

Is there a reason you can't tell us which one?

Re: The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm

#29

Post by hrush »

breckinloggins wrote: post #27
hrush wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be perfectly honest, we didn't test for differently worded labels at all. So, we'd be outright lying if we said what you're asking us to. We agree that we need to work on improving the design of the feature and we will be doing just that. “X seats left at this price” is a better label, but may be too long to fit for the way it is currently designed, so we will need to think about how we can best convey the informa…

I was thinking about that. What about an asterisk? Then you could make the tooltip the asterisk expansion. On the bottom of the page, you could also give the expanded version. This might be the best of both worlds, because you can keep the wording but you also let people know there's more information about what it means. EDIT: Another idea... So, you could make the price plus the "x left" be a single graphical unit,…

Great suggestions, thanks a ton for taking the time.

We'll be making some changes to it very soon and we'll post details once the changes are live.

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