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Lost in Translation…and Navigation
Author: Anne McLain
May 8, 2007
Recently, American Airlines (AA) launched a website just for women travelers. It got dissed pretty quickly because of the initial lavender (non-AA branded) color scheme and lack of meaty content for real women travelers. I agree. There is the start of some good content, but there is still so much more they could include. I’d love to see some actual commentary from women travelers so you feel connected as a community. Research shows that female consumers are more likely to seek advice or information from others before a purchase, so this has huge potential!
But one issue still stands out above all. No one has mentioned that the site is just lacking some good, old-fashioned usability. There are 3 silos of information, but each time you want to navigate through the site, you must hit the back button to return to the microsite’s home page before you can move to another section—or even within that section. How frustrating! The site also resides within the already busy AA.com web interface so you could easily click out of the microsite without even knowing it. If they haven’t lost women with content, they’ll lose them in navigation.
I give American a lot of credit for being one of the first to truly tap this $4 trillion marketplace. Now, just remember to talk with us, not to us.
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Yes, the navigation is really unusable. The whole site is a mess, I think mainly because targeting all women at once is…a pointlessly huge market segment. You can hear the confusion even on the main page copy: “If you travel frequently or sporadically, with family, friends, or on your own…” Obviously AA hasn’t focused in enough on a specific target segment if they are writing garbage like that.
Comment by Kim — June 4, 2007 @ 3:18 pm