Posts Tagged ‘travel’

August 8th, 2008 | BY Jep Castelein

10 Rules for Faceted Search on Travel Sites

On the Internet Evolution weblog Rob Geier presents some interesting findings from an Informationweek survey about Rich Internet Applications. According to the survey, the most important reason to use RIAs is improving the Customer Experience. Although management dashboards and customer support are also popular, many companies are already building RIAs for self-service and e-commerce.

Rob’s main RIA example is Home & Abroad, a personalized travel site. If you have a couple of minutes, use the ‘Quick Planner’ to see how they suggest a trip itinerary based on your preferences: pretty cool.

However, when I started editing my itinerary I wasn’t very impressed with the user experience. Until I realized why I wasn’t impressed:

► All travel planning sites need great faceted search!

And that’s what Home & Abroad is missing. I scoured the internet for some other examples. I found some good sites via the excellent Web 2.0 Travel blog and Travel+Leisure’s Top 25 Travel Sites. But let’s first define what we mean with Faceted Search.

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