CruisePricesCompared.com网站点评

　　又一个细节点评。这次我们看一个邮轮成交价比较网，也是一个“代理的代理”网站：CruisePricesCompared.com。

　　之所以称之为“代理的代理”，是因为顾客被送到代理那里完成交易，而不是被送往供应商那里预订。这跟前两天我点评的travel.co.uk有点像，不过travel.co.uk各方面做得更好些。

　　5点我喜欢的

　　1、创始人已经建立了某些东西并运行，而不是仅仅在空谈

　　Harley Van Stratten（译者注：CruisePricesCompared.com创始人），做得好！很多代理商还在没精打采地抱怨网站给他们生意带来了什么，而Harley已成功地运营了一个独特的网站来解决他认为正在增长的问题。给Harley投一票！

　　竞争导致价格降低，这使得代理商得自邮轮销售的利润每个月都在被侵蚀。代理商不得不通过打折进行竞争，这意味着，他们将无法承担广告费用。而在cruisepricescompared.com上，他们可以免费做广告，由于无需支付销售费用，利润空间自然可以提升。

　　我认为，以后几年内邮轮会成为一个竞争激烈的产业。（因为传统旅游线路已经转移到网上了，）那些通过专门销售邮轮来避难的传统代理商最终可能会发现，邮轮不再如此吸引人。我相信，Harley的目标是帮助这些代理商保住市场份额。

　　2、别想着只要有一条游艇就可以开始经营，也别想着冒充超级英雄

　　你也许还记得昨天我点评了SoCruise，一个新的邮轮社会网络，也在做邮轮（英国）。SoCruise以超级英雄的形象推广自己，他们宣称打算从伊比沙岛的两条游艇开始他们的生意（现在只有5名雇员），现在，它因此而出名了。这就是SoCruise25万欧元种子资金的去向？

　　3、代理的代理模式

　　我喜欢代理的代理这种模式，本周关于这点我已经讲得太多了（在travel.co.uk点评里）。但这仍是CruisePricesCompared.com网站的优点。

　　这一模式足够让我推崇，但假如我开公司的话，却不会照搬。这一模式仅仅是“更好的烛台”（也就是说，这是对旧模式的改进，而非创新）。

　　抱歉，今天只有3点。没有补偿。

　　5点我不喜欢的

　　1、视频自动播放

　　主页右上角有个视频位置，对任何广告者“待租”。这挺好的——我只是希望他们能把自动启动关上（尤其是首页是唯一能查询的页面，当你浏览网站的时候，你需要经常返回，而视频每次都会启动）。

　　可以用再次访问时关闭来替代关闭自动启动（使用cookie）。可能这是解决这个问题最好的方式。

　　2、颜色

　　蓝红搭配非常刺眼，不是很舒服（颜色理应像邮轮度假那般舒适）。

　　 

　　更糟的是，蓝色与链接文字的颜色是一样的。我不是设计者，所以不会去深究颜色选择的内情，但是，我不喜欢这些颜色——这就够了。

　　3、页面文字太多

　　网站文字太多而要点不足。

　　在网站上，文字是很有趣的东西，它们包含信息，同时又是用户界面的核心部分。网页上非常容易文字过多。

　　很多较小的（以及较大的）站点都不会在网站项目里使用独立的文案编写者。虽然文案编写者越来越贵，但他们同样能用文字创造出惊人的效果。使用他们。

　　（根据我的经验，网站设计代理做的网站项目更喜欢使用独立的文案编写者。代理商，尤其是较大的代理商，懂得如何创建一个人才团队。）

　　4、广告模式&“其他内容”不足

　　站点唯一的内容就是邮轮交易的内容，再加上一个相当奇怪的网页，内容是在旅游行业，邮轮是怎样的最能保持神秘的产业之一。

　　这让我不解他们将如何做商业模式。他们的建议模式是：所有的流量免费送给邮轮销售代理商，也就是说，代理商可以进来，上传一些产品并获得流量。不从代理商那里赚钱。

　　但没有了大量的其他的页面，就不会有充足的网页效果来赚取广告收入，足够支撑网站的潜在成本，以及向顾客推广网站。

　　B2C网站成本巨大，例如：

　　哪里关注邮轮，我们就在哪做广告；

　　向代理商推广网站也要成本……

　　很明显我还没看到他们的数字，但根据我的经验，真的需要成千上万能提高权重的页面，才能有大量的广告收入。

　　我的建议是，在跟代理商去做PPC的同时，推介“象征性”的月费，让尽可能多的产品上传。对于广告者来说，免费和象征性收费没什么差别，但人们每月花点小钱会让他们更为关注正在往系统里上传哪种类型的交易。质量会提升。

　　5、搜索

　　从基础入手

　　（1）用GET而非POST方式（译者注：GET方法将数据存放于环境变量QUERY_STRING，并构造成为URL的一部分传递给服务器。而POST则是把数据分离地传递给服务器，脚本程序通过标准输入函数获取这些数据），这样返回按钮仍然有效（你可以从单一结果返回结果主页面）。

　　（2）垂直间距：使之紧凑，这样在1024 x 768屏幕上你就能在第一屏看到数据了。

　　我可以继续谈论搜索——这是网站的关键部分，但还不是很合适。

　　不过，对于搜索，我主要关心的是，多个代理商都有同一艘邮轮的情况如何处理。结果会根据邮轮分组吗？

　　这实在是归结于不从代理商那里收取PPC广告费用。假如他们支付了，出价最高的代理商（或者最高的两个等等）就会取代那个特定的邮轮显示出来。

　　我很有兴趣知道他们倾向于如何处理，否则的话，如果有100家邮轮代理都供应，邮轮之间就会重复。用户界面不会真的经得起那种压力，如果系统不好用，用户就会舍弃它。

　　原文来源：Musings on travel ecommerce 作者：Alex Bainbridge

原文：

10 things about Cruise Prices Compared.com

So - another detailed review. This time let us take a look at a new cruise deal price-comparison / meta-agent site - CruisePricesCompared.com

I say “meta agent” because rather than sending through bookings to suppliers, customers are sent through to agents to complete the transaction. This is similar in style to travel.co.uk that I reviewed 2 days ago - although travel.co.uk is a much neater solution all round.

5 things I like

The founder has built and launched something rather than just talking about it

Well done to Harley Van Stratten. There are many agents who mope around complaining about what the web is doing to their business - but Harley has successfully launched a novel website to defend against what he sees as a growing problem. To quote Harley

Each month the money agents earn from cruise sales is being eroded because competition is pushing prices down. Agents are having to discount to compete and that means they can’t afford to advertise. On cruisepricescompared.com, they can advertise for free, which means they can start increasing their margins because they are not paying distribution costs

I agree that cruise is going to be a competitive sector in the next couple of years. Traditional agents who ran for shelter by specialising in cruise sales (because traditional tour packages had moved online) may find cruise isn’t such an attractive place to be after all. I am sure Harley is aiming to help these agents maintain market share.

Not being run from a yacht or pretending to be a super hero

Yesterday you may remember I reviewed SoCruise - a new cruise social network that is also going after the cruise deals sector (in the UK). SoCruise are now (in)famous for promoting themselves using super heroes and by saying they intend to run their business (now with 5 employees) from 2 yachts in Ibiza. Is that what SoCruise’s 250,000 EUR seed funding was spent on?

The meta-agent model

I like the meta-agent model….. but I have gone on about this too much already this week (in the travel.co.uk review). But its still a positive for the CruisePricesCompared.com site.

I like the model enough to respect it but it isn’t one I would follow if I were doing a startup. It is too much of a “better candlesticks” approach…. when I am personally interested in electricity (i.e. its an improvement on an old model - rather than anything new)

Sorry - just have 3 things I like today. No refunds available.

5 things I don’t like

Video auto start

The homepage has a video slot in the top right hand corner. This will be available “for rent” to any advertiser. That is fine - I just wish they would turn auto-start off (especially as the homepage is the only page with the search on - so when you navigate around the site - you have to come back to that page often - and the video starts playing every time).

An alternative to turning the auto-start off is to make it start with the volume off on subsequent visits to the page (using a cookie). That is probably the most elegant way of solving the problem.

Colours

The blues and reds are really pretty bright and not very relaxing (as a cruise holiday should be)

But what is worse is that the blue is the same colour as hyperlinked text…. OK - I am not a designer - so I won’t get into the ins and outs of colour choices - but suffice to say - I don’t like the colours.

Pages are too wordy

This website has too many words and not enough bullet points.

Words are a funny thing on websites as they are both informative and are a core part of the user interface. It is far too easy to have too many of them.

One skill that many smaller (and larger) websites don’t tend to bring in to a website project is a dedicated copywriter. Copywriters, although they tend to be expensive, can do amazing things with words. Use them.

[Website projects undertaken by web design agencies are, in my experience, much more likely to use dedicated copywriters. Agencies understand how to create a team of all the talents, especially larger agencies]

Advertising model & not enough “other content”

The only content on this site is the cruise deal content - plus a rather weird page about how cruise is one of the best kept secrets in the travel industry.

This makes me wonder how they are going to make their business model work. Their suggested model is that all traffic is freely given to cruise selling agents…. i.e. an agent can come along, load up some products and receive traffic. No money to be made from agents there then.

But without lots of other pages - there just won’t be sufficient page impressions to make enough advertising income to cover either the operational costs of the site - or marketing the site to consumers.

The B2C marketing will cost a great deal of money. To quote:

Where there are adverts for cruising, we will advertise too

Marketing to agents will also cost money…..

Obviously I haven’t seen their numbers - but in my experience to make sensible advertising income you really need thousands of pages all pulling their weight.

My advice would be either to move to a PPC model with the agents - or introduce a “nominal” monthly charge to be able to upload as many deals as you like. For an advertiser there is little difference between free and nominal - but people paying a small fee a month will actually care more about what kind of deals they are loading into the system. Quality will go up.

Search

Lets start with the basics

•Use GET not POST - so that the back button still works (and you can get back from a single result to the main results page)

•Vertical spacing - tighten it all up so you can get the data above the fold on a 1024 x 768 screen

I could go on and on about the search. This is the key part of the site - but it isn’t really quite right yet.

My main concern about the search though is how the situation with multiple agents all loading a deal for the same cruise is going to be handled. Will the deals be grouped by cruise?

This really stems from the problem of not taking PPC advertising from the agents - if they were then deals from the top bidding agent could be shown against that specific cruise (or top two or whatever).

I would be interested to know how they intend to solve this - otherwise with, say, 100 cruise agents all loading offers there will be duplication between cruises…. the user interface will not really stand up to that kind of pressure - and users just won’t use the system as it will be unwieldy.