Assessing Airport Website Usability

It's a holiday weekend and a lot of people will be taking to the skies this weekend so I thought I'd take a look at airport websites to assess their usability. What I found is that airport websites vary considerably in their content, functionality and ease of use. Some have implemented very slick features, but all have room for improvement on some of the basics.

From this site I selected three airports for this initial review: Portland, San Francisco and Seattle.

The format I used was similar to the performance shoot outs that car magazines frequently use.

Round One: Finding the airport website.

How easy is it to find the airport's website? I tried the same Google search for all three airports: city name airport. In each case, the official airport site was the top search result. Next, we compared the URLs to see how logical or easy to remember they were. Read on for more details.

Portland (PDX):
Google search found http://www.portlandairportpdx.com. (PDX also goes by http://www.flypdx.com)

San Francisco (SFO):
Google search found http://www.flysfo.com.

Seattle (SEA):
Google search found http://www.portseattle.org/seatac/.

Conclusion: It was easy to find all three sites, though Seattle's URL is the hardest to remember if you're not local to Seattle. The FlyXXX.com scheme used by both San Francisco and Portland seems an easy one to remember if your brain works like a travel agent. A quick search of a half dozen other major airports did not find additional support for this convention. Rather, many airports seem to use City-Name-XXX.com as in Atlanta-ATL.com, Los-Angeles-LAX.com or Phoenix-PHX.com. I like FlyXXX.com. It's shorter (always good) and, while cryptic, no more so than City-Name-XXX.com.

Portland, San Francisco: 2
Seattle: 0

Round Two: First impressions of airport website. (Is beauty only pixel-deep?)

Portland (PDX):
http://www.flypdx.com

The PDX site loads quickly and the user is presented with a pleasing photo animation of various airport scenes. The first image is of a plane flying by a snow-capped Mt. Hood. First impressions are very favorable. To the right, "welcome" flashes tastefully in a variety of languages before fading to a world map with "Portland, Oregon" prominently labeled. The home page design is clean and well organized with information in four main columns: Travel Information, PDX Services, Aviation Information, and Employment. There is a search bar and site index at the top right and the bottom corner is reserved for promotional content. If only the rest of the site were as beautiful; one click and it starts to feel a lot more like a government site and less like a tourism site.

San Francisco (SFO):
http://www.flysfo.com

The SFO site doesn't do the airport justice. I love the approach to SFO by car (seeing that massive "San Francisco International Airport" lettering across the width of the front of the international terminal) and while the site tries to capture the arc theme, it doesn't work. The colors are muddy. A very slick search function is featured prominently on the left half of the screen, but the rest is harder to use. The major category links (Airport Guide, Ground Transport, Airline Info, Parking, About SFO) are in muted grey across the top and I missed them on my first pass. Instead, the line animation gets quickly annoying and the news links and airport information are formatted the same. I think the site was more effective a few years ago.

Seattle (SEA):
http://www.portseattle.org/seatac/

The Sea-Tac airport is the only one of the three that does not have its own dedicated site and this inhibits usability because it is merely a subsite of the broader Port of Seattle site. The formatting of the site looks more like a newspaper or blog than an airport site. There are way too many links with two rows of text links across the top of the content and a left nav bar full of links as well. In addition, there is a box of "Today" links at right. The most important element on the page seems to be a large button in the center to sign up for e-mail lists. Hmm. For frequent (read: local) users, this site has deep content, but first impressions are overwhelming and confusing. In addition, this is the only site of the three that scrolls.

Conclusion: Portland gets off to an early lead with a friendly, restrained home page design. SFO has a great site, but a poor front page and Seattle's site is simply too overwhelming for a first-time visitor.

Portland: 2
San Francisco, Seattle: 1

Round Three: Where can I fly non-stop from this airport?

Okay, so now we've found the airport and we wanted to explore all the places we could go.

Portland (PDX):
- 2 clicks brought me to this page, which then requires the user to guess if there is non-stop service from PDX to a given city by presenting a search box. There are also two links to list all non-stop carriers and all non-stop destinations. So, in 3 clicks I found what I was looking for. To find out who flew to a given non-stop destination, one more click was necessary. Unfortunately, that is where the intuition breaks down. Selecting the carrier link, I presumed I would be connected to a reservations system or at least a timetable for that flight. Instead, I was presented with a list of all other destinations that carrier serves from PDX (useful info, but not what I was expecting).

San Francisco (SFO):
- On the home page I saw a link for "New Nonstop Destinations" that had press releases touting new services to Maui and Beijing, but it did not have any link to existing non-stop destinations.
- 6 clicks brought me back to this list of all airlines serving SFO that was accessible from the home page, but I was unable to find a list of non-stop destinations. I tried to perform a key-word search, but discovered the Search link in fact only goes to an A-Z site listing. More confusing, this is different than the Site Map.

Seattle (SEA):
- 2 clicks from the home page brought me this list of non-stop international destinations, along with the carriers on each flight. The desired information was annoyingly below the fold, but clearly presented in a table. Unfortunately, it took another 2 clicks to find the non-stop domestic destinations and this information appears only to be presented in a graphic map that looks like it was created in PowerPoint. Worse, there is no indication of which carrier serves a given non-stop destination.

Conclusion: All three sites took different approaches to presenting this information and aspects of each work well and do not work as well. Seattle's site was best overall (especially for the manner in which it presents international destinations). Both Seattle and Portland make it pretty easy to find their non-stop international destinations (perhaps because they don't have as many and want to tout them) whereas San Francisco, as a major global hub airport, doesn't feel the need to tout its status. Perhaps this is the old adage that if you have to tell people you're cool, then you're not really cool.

Seattle: 2
Portland: 1
San Francisco: 0

Round Four: I'm picking up my friend at the airport. Help.

Portland (PDX):
Scenario: Meeting friend arriving from Frankfurt on Lufthansa.
- In 2 clicks, I knew what time her plane was arriving and at which gate. That was easy.

Next challenge: Is there space to park or do I need to take mass transit? Returning to the site home page, 1 click gets me the info I need: the parking garage is currently half full. This information is presented in a nifty graph for each of the three parking options at PDX.

Finally, how do I get from the parking lot to the gate? Selecting the Gate Locations link in the left nav bar returns a simplified floor plan for the entire airport, annotated by airline. Perfect!

San Francisco (SFO):
Scenario: Meeting friend arriving from Miami on American.

On SFO's home page, there is a feature called SFOnroute that claims to provide "a custom map of the airport with flight, terminal, and transportation information." Curious, I decide to try it out. It is brilliant and far and away the most intelligent thing I've yet seen.

In 2 clicks, I'm presented with this page which tells me the flight information, American's toll free phone number, its arrival status, gate and baggage claim information, as well as the closest place to park. On the right side, it provides step-by-step directions as to where to park, which elevator to take, where to walk and what landmarks (complete with pictures!) to watch for as you make your way to the airport destination. Very slick.

Seattle (SEA):
Scenario: Meeting friend arriving from Copenhagen on SAS.

Trying not to act impulsively, I study my options before I select a link. I finally settle on one called "Flight Info" but it turns out to not be quite what I am looking for. So I select the "Track a Flight" link which dumps me here on a totally different site with a completely new user interface. Very disorienting.

I try to track my friend's flight, but soon discover their search only supports USA and Canadian airports. Hmm. So I poke around a little bit more and am not successful in finding the timetable. Ultimately, I resort to leaving the SEA-TAC site and heading over to the airline site to find out when the plane lands. 6 clicks later, I find out the arrival time but no indication if this is "real time." I suspect not.

Accepting this, I try to figure out the best way to get to the airport. Luckily, the site has a wealth of information about ground transportation options. They have thoughtfully included a link to the Puget Sound Traffic Conditions page maintained by WSDOT.

Conclusion: SFO wins this category hands down with its custom instructions. It's like MapQuest for inside the airport. PDX is easy to use as well and has a slick gauge on parking availability. SEA is wanting at best, lacking an easy way to obtain real time flight status for all flights, though it excels in the ground transportation area.

San Francisco: 2
Portland: 1
Seattle: 0

Overall Score:
Portland: 6
San Francisco: 5
Seattle: 3

While all three sites are serviceable, this investigation has shown that there are still several areas of possible improvement on these airline sites. This sample is far too small to make any generalized conclusions. Still, I hope that this analysis is insightful and helpful to users of these sites and catches the attention of the developers of these sites. Until next time...

Comments

[alan]

What's more important is that PDX has the best food.