Search Results on Flight Booking Websites: Displaying Departure and Return Flights on a Single Page vs Two Consecutive Pages

Abstract

Flight ticket booking engines on airline and online travel agency websites use two different designs to present roundtrip flight search results: some websites display outbound and return flights on a single page, while others show them on two consecutive pages. In our pilot experiment with 23 users we compared these two design options on a model flight booking website. Usability metrics like speed of performance and error rate were accompanied by eye-tracking and mouse-tracking indicators of cognitive load. The experiment produced mixed results: two-page design outperformed simultaneous presentation of outbound and inbound flights in terms of performance speed, but it also caused almost three times higher error rate and incurred a higher cognitive load compared to one-page design. Further research, with more users representing different age groups, different levels of task complexity, and analysis of users' subjective preferences, is necessary.

A Comparative Eye Tracking Study of Usability—Towards Sustainable Web Design

“…While many diverse outcomes were obtained from the analyzed data, several main ideas can be underlined, together with their practical implication in web design. Thus, one of the main outcomes was that we confirmed the results of other studies [64,79,86,98,106,107,120], showing that the structure of information and layout proved to influence usability more than users' experience with the website. Regarding the best approaches to attract attention, the following results are useful for web developers, as they can contribute to one of the two possible objectives: (1) design the webpage so that the user finds the needed information as easy as possible, spending a short time on the webpage for fulfilling a task or (2) ensure a pleasant experience, thus a longer stay on the webpage and full visual coverage of the content, for explorative visits of the webpage.…”

“…While no statistical differences were shown in the analysis of simple versus complex websites, more fixations and longer duration of fixations were identified when the task carried out by the subjects was a complex one, no matter the complexity of the website. In the same area of interest, Zlokazova et al [107] compared how an airline web page's structure impacted web usability. While being eye tracked, the subjects (23) firstly used a website that presented two-way flights on the same page; secondly, a webpage that presented each route on a separate, subsequent page was used.…”

“…A randomly created, non-representative sample of 22 subjects (21-36 years old), 11 male and 11 female, was selected for the study. Taking into consideration the samples used in different other eye-tracking studies [73,89,91,105,107], we have established a minimum of 20 participants to the study; out of the 50 invitations sent to students and graduates of Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania, 22 participants showed up for the study. Data were collected by applying a combined research method: a survey (questionnaire) and neuromarketing (eye tracking).…”

“…Pan et al [98] showed that the complexity of the webpage, therefore the way information is structured, impacts the scanpath structure and the extent to which it differs from one individual to another. Zlokazova et al [107] compared two different designs for an airline webpage, showing that a two-page structure of the booking feature proved to perform faster but with more errors. Various studies [118,[121][122][123] showed that information that is new and unfamiliar will be either fixated for a longer time or will need more fixations in order to be understood; having this in mind, the following hypothesis was established.…”

Gaze behavior in single-page monomodal and cross-modal switches as affected by Event construal

“…In recent years, eye-tracking research in cross-modal (for instance, in text and image) and monomodal switches has become an integral component of usability multimedia and VR studies. Gaze costs are explored as contingent on 1) foregrounding effects in pictorial modality [8,33] or language modality [2,8,14,30], 2) spatial effects in bimodal systems [18,23,25], 3) types of tasks performed [4,12,24], 4) several cognitive foregrounding effects, for instance dynamicity and agentivity [28,35], 5) cross-modal information mapping [1,30,37]. Although prognostic computing has made significant progress, there are still challenges for assessing gaze effects in monomodal and bimodal systems as affected by systemic event construal.…”