

Ask HN: Please help with feedback on my app (Adioso for vacations) - wriggler

I finished an app (www.sunscanner.co.uk) a few days back after 2 weeks hard at work that that tries to address the problem of "I've got a week and amount X to spend for vacation, where can I go?". A lot like Adioso, or Kayak Explore.<p>I'd love some feedback on it from the HN community because I'm frankly at a loss as to what to do next. I spent $30 to advertise on Stumbleupon last week, obviously 300 users isn't a lot but the bounce rate (75%+) told me it's not really hitting the right note.<p>Grateful for any thoughts and constructive criticism.
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destraynor
Hey Wriggler,

I wouldn't base too much on that poor bounce rate. What you need is to target
UK folks who are actively looking for holidays, I'm not sure Stumbleupon is a
great way to do this.

Here's my thoughts UI wise

1\. You need to learn more about your market, or maybe you already know this
but have yet to put it into practice.

Start with one particular user, let's say John. John is an Adwords guy in
Google. He is 28 and wants to go on a summer trip with his girlfriend. By an
exercise left to the reader John has found your site. John needs to go away in
August as that's when downtime is for his team, and he's hoping spend about
£400 or thereabouts, though he will pay more for a better place.

Based on John alone, here are a few random thoughts.

1\. It's a bit funky to drag end of the slider on top of another just to say
"August". Also I think you should consider handling custom date ranges.

2\. Sliders aren't a great mechanism in my opinion, as they don't tell you
what you're missing out on. Possibly a histogram behind them would help. (See
Year or Price on this page <http://www.carzone.ie/> to see what I mean)

3\. People don't book package holidays in isolation. John should be able to
input "10th of August for 7 nights, less than £600" and then send this to his
girlfriend, or post it to Facebook, or do whatever so that John and his group
can make a decision. (This is especially true for package holidays)

4\. Ditch the sliders (hey I said these thoughts were random). You must
realise your slider for selecting stars was a bad idea when you were coding
it.

5\. Spent more time on designing your search results page. Basically when
someone clicks the little bubble and gets a list of 5 packages, they
inevitably have to bounce into and out of each of them to assess them. This
isn't a great experience. The more info you can offer up front the better.

Overall great job, I think you've done some good work, and the stuff I've
wrote about is relatively minor in comparison to the significant challenge of
getting the traffic you need.

Best of luck, Des

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wriggler
Thanks for the really insightful comments. UI-wise, I can probably fix most of
these (e.g. dates).

As you say, the real challenge is getting the traffic. Stumbleupon users are
far from my target, but at least a cheap way to see how people interact with
the site. Google Adwords is most likely best for targeting ready buyers, but
without an idea of the expected value of each customer, may be too expensive
at this point.

Thanks again for taking the time to comment in such depth, appreciated.

~~~
notintokyo
As an occasional stumbleupon user myself, I can say I'm not in the prime mood
to book a vacation while using it. You probably prefer 10 people in vacation
shopping mode than 300 people in lol I'm bored -mode.

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destraynor
Definitely true. This is my main concern with things like Facebook ads. I've
seen folks buy them by the dozen, and rarely see their money back.

I'd say try your next $30 on Google adwords like "package holidays" etc and
see how that traffic performs.

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kirchhoff
I think your site is neat. StumbleUpon users, in my experience, tend to show a
high bounce rate (often not waiting long enough for a site to load), so they
are not a good test case.

If you're still looking to advertise, Adwords might be a better bet, though
your niche, as you know, is extremely competitive.

Aside from that, I have a couple of comments on the UI:

1\. After clicking a price tag, you get an overlay which looks to be draggable
(hand icon) but is not. It also exhibits a disconcerting zoom in/out effect
when you zoom the map with the overlay visible.

2\. Personally I think the logo wouldn't be totally out of place on a tub of
margarine. No offense intended. Objectively, it doesn't match the colour
scheme of the site.

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wriggler
Ha, I actually thought the logo looks similar to a cheap hotel/motel chain I
saw when I was in the States, can't remember its name but it's not a good
association :)

Sadly this is the limit of my photoshop skills for the time being.

Will update my JS to close the overlay on a zoom event, thanks for the tip.

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ig1
I like the idea, but going to your site I can't see your value proposition.

Your key differentiator is that you combine hotel+flight prices and you should
make that more clear. Also it's not clear if your hotel prices are per person
(with the assumption that there's two of you sharing) or per room.

I also agree with several of the other comments that you need to focus on your
target audience much more. I'd recommend targeting 20-30 year olds without
kids with disposal income who are looking for somewhere to go for the weekend.

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wriggler
Hi Imran,

I think you're right that the value prop isn't made explicit enough at the
moment - I could use adding some kind of introductory text to make it clear
what the site is about, question is where to put it.

To me, the value proposition is that 1. it shows you the absolute cheapest
dates to go somewhere if you have the flexibility and 2. that it shows great
deals to places you might never have thought of otherwise - all much easier to
spot because the results are mapped.

Good suggestion re. target audience. Assuming you're talking about changes to
the site itself (rather than its advertising) I'd be interested to hear what
changes or additions you would make to go about that, i.e. to specifically
target the 20-30 singles demographic.

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dclaysmith
Looks nice and definitely a site I would use. My thoughts:

* Include more airports (US).

* You state your problem is "I've got a week.." but your UI forces you to supply a relatively broad, non-specific date range. I would use it for "I have next weekend free" or the "3rd week in April free". I think a more traditional date picker option would be better here.

Good luck!

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wriggler
Thanks for the advice, will look at options for being more specific on dates -
although I suppose what I am really trying to offer here is an opportunity to
see the absolute best prices on packages for those who have flexibility around
their travel dates.

Thanks again!

