Analysis of 2 Consumer Sites (pg 141)

I analyzed two travel sites, Trip Advisor and Trip Expert, on a search for hotels in Hawaii. The sites had similar formats, with filters for specific location in Hawaii, price, hotel brand, style, amenities, etc. They both also had a rating, Trip Advisor had it in a number out of five stars and Trip Expert had it as a number rating out of 100, a small description of the hotel, and a flattering picture of it in in the list of search results. Since the sites had so many similarities, it made the differences really stand out. Overall, I found Trip Expert to be more useful. I found its display more aesthetically pleasing, and since the sites provided most of the same information, their visual displays were crucial in deciding which one I liked better. Trip Advisor had a lot of pop-up ads on the sides of the search pages, which distracted me. They also had booking information for each hotel on the list, whereas Trip Expert had no pop-up ads and just one check in/check out date, number of guests, number of rooms filter on the page. Trip Expert’s less cluttered website made it clearer and easier to use and access the information. If I were to change Trip Advisor, I would take out or limit the ads and just de-clutter the website.