Student+Universe

Mustapha Monkainfon, Critique
Studentuniverse.com is travel site for college students, faculty, and youth 18-25 years old. It is an online only site that sells everything needed to travel all over the world. They offer to their targeted audience discount on travel, hotels, car rentals, travel insurance, etc.

[|www.studentuniverse.com]


 * Low-level items (spelling, fonts, colors, layouts, etc.): **

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The overall simplicity of the website conveys a kind of peacefulness. White and aqua are the predominant colors, but tabs turn red when you click on it, to let the user know in what section he/she is. The spelling are pretty good since there are not using long words and sentences, they kept them very short, which add to the simplicity of the page. There is a consistency between the layout of the main page and those of the different subpage. Everything is similar, so that the user can easily find is way. The font is kept the same throughout the site, nothing really eye-catchy. ======

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The site offers the usual functionalities and menu designs find in other travelling websites but with the main difference that there is no cluttering with menus buttons. Everything is again, kept simple. On the search box for the origin and the destination of flights as well as location of hotel, after entering the first three letters of the city, a drop down menu pop up to help you choose the proper entering, this help avoid any error or input the wrong entry. Moreover, a calendar menu can be clicked to avoid entering the wrong date and in case the wrong date is entered, a small pop up window will appear with an error message and the location where the error was made, this give a type of security to the user. ======

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Despite the complexity that a travel site can have, studentuniverse.com site lay down the different parts or sections of its site in a coherent and well-structured manner. It is very easy to understand and navigate it. Build in a hierarchical fashion, interests are ranked from left to right, from the most important to the less, so since most of their audience are more interested about flights, and then hotels, menus follow on the page follow that structure. Again, the simplicity of the site makes it really appealing to its target audience, students, faculty and youth; there is no extras or unnecessary information that is cluttering other similar sites. In term of privacy protection and credibility, the company offers a very good and detailed privacy policy that can be easily access and verified. Plus, they are member of the ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents), which is a well-established and recognized organization; they are registered seller of travel on all the states that require this type of registration and they provide registration numbers for all those states and anybody can easily verified them. Finally, financial information are well secured and processed according to the industry standard and the laws. ======