Cathay Pacific Airways on Saturday unveiled a new creative look to its web-site that improves customer access to flight, service and promotion/information. The site experience should be better due to simplified navigation and clearer colour schemes.
The airline's customers even played a key part in the design process as feedback from surveys and site analysis shed more light on changes they most want. In addition to the thorough and methodical usability studies, customers participated in surveys and focus groups, and web logs were used to trace pathways in the site most often in use.
Checking schedules and searching for special offers featured high on Cathay Pacific passengers' list of important features so the new site places them in a better position. Online check-in and other key functions, such as checking flight status, are also displayed more prominently in the centre of the homepage to encourage greater use.
The whole site was re-designed with help from San Francis co-based Adaptive Path, who are experts in user interface design and online customer experience improvement. Also contributing on the programming front were Infosys, an Indian technology company, and our own technology team from Cathay Pacific.
This is the fifth version of the Cathay Pacific site - the first was created in 1996. The previous version was voted as having the best online booking engine in the 2006 Asia Money magazine poll of business travellers.
Planned future site additions include an enhanced booking engine through which customers will be able to change ticket bookings and see a greater variety of fares. Complete flight, hotel and car rental packages are planned as well.
It's been one of the most significant and largest projects ever undertaken by the Cathay Pacific e-Business team. The new web site will enable us to stay at the forefront of world class airline web sites and continue to meet our customers expectation said Cathay Pacific Manager e-Business Scott Ohman.
"We need to continually improve the site to meet higher customer expectations, ensure online use is easy and intuitive and ensure that customers have additional flexibility and choice, he said.-PR