

Adioso (YC W09) launch mini-site for Valentine's Day travel deals - nedwin
http://howmuchdoyouheartme.com

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sradu
That's one gorgeous mini-site.

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tomhoward
Many thanks :) Credit for the design to James Noble at Carter Digital.
<http://www.cartercreative.com.au/>

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bryanh
Apparently Niagra Falls is the only option at any price point for me.

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oman121
I also thought it was only showing Niagara falls. Turns out it begins with the
cheapest destination. There is a next button on the right to view other
destinations.

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kirpekar
I am probably not their target customer -- I will just never use this sort of
thing. I'm curious to know who this is targeted to.

I don't need ideas on where to travel. Recommendations on destination come
from family and friends ... the game is then to fit it into budget / vacation
days / schedule, etc.

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tomhoward
Perhaps you're not the target user for this specific product: the idea is to
show people what their destination & accommodation options are at a given
budget. It's particularly useful for people who like the idea of taking a trip
for Valentine's day but find the process of manually searching flight &
accommodation options too slow/hard.

Though it hasn't got there yet, the plan with the main Adioso site is to do
what you described; if you have a destination, budget and vague timeframe in
mind, Adioso will monitor options and prices, and alert you when a deal
becomes available.

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thenduks
This looks really awesome but it apparently only has US airports.

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beingacquired
It's international but it still only allows me to select an airport about 20
hours drive away. I'm not sure what their logic is in self-selecting an
airport in a country that is outside of my usual area while I'm traveling?

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kasted
this page will convert terribly

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atroche
What makes you say that?

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alextgordon
It look me a while to find the submit button - it's camouflaged against the
background and in front of a bookmark shape...

Also I suspect the minimum price point ($500/£250) is too high. The text of
the site is challenging the user to spend more ("How much do you <3 me?") so
it will be more difficult than usual for users to select the minimum (or in
their words: "A little").

They'd do better to make the submit button actually look like a button, and to
set the minimum to $0 (even though no flights will ever be found for that
price).

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mariuskempe
Adioso strikes me as a company with little social sense. Asking how much I
'value' my girlfriend is just... off. And similarly, the fact their normal
site actually _admits_ that it has a confusing interface and asks if you want
help understanding it is just the oddest UX design I've ever heard of.

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tbull007
Had to go look at the main site again as this isn't my recollection of it. So
yes, there is a small "show search help" link under the main search entry, but
I don't see this as an admission of a confusing interface. Feels more like
helps there if you need it, but unobtrusive if you don't.

I think in the problem domain the Adioso guys are in, this is a fair trade
off. Not all first time users would understand the concept of natural language
search and would instead be looking for "from and to" dates.

What's you suggestion to improve the main site? I think it's pretty good.

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mariuskempe
Go to <http://adioso.com/search?q=A+hard+search+query> in an incognito window
or similar - you have to have not visited before. A bar comes up at the top of
the page saying that the interface "can be a little confusing".

I have no thoughts on the interface per se, I just think that if you have to
admit that your interface is confusing, you've already lost.

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thenduks
That only happens if you end up with no results (eg, you didn't really grasp
what to search for). Eg: <http://adioso.com/search?q=france> \-- does not show
that bar.

