Hostels.com

=Hostels.com Critique ([])=

Hostels.com is a website dedicated to finding and reserving "rooms" at hostels worldwide. It displays ratings, pricing, and information about the accommodations at various hostels. The website also allows for account creation, so that users can save information and rate hostels they have stayed at.

Low-level items (spelling, fonts, colors, layouts, etc.)
I think that the choice of red color in the website is a little jarring; however, that would be more of a personal preference than anything else. The choice of color is consistent across the website. I could not detect any major grammatical or spelling errors on the front page. Moving on to the fonts: The website uses a very clear font and appropriate use of headers to present a very well organized page. Color is emphasized on headings and subheadings, and bold is used properly to emphasize pricing. The layout of the front page is great: what the audience wants to do (reserve a hostel) is right at the beginning, making an obvious design dialog of a starting point to someone's adventure. If someone would like to do a little more research before jumping right into the hostel search, the website has the "Featured destination" section and "Travel features" section to entice the reader.

Middle-level aspects (consistency, error handling, writing style, menu design, etc.)
As I mentioned in the previous section, the font and layout consistency is, well, consistent. The navigation bar and header remains in the same location and has the same options as you navigate each webpage. The currently selected "tab" of the navigation bar lets the user know where they are currently in the webpage, and I believe helps raise recognition over recall during the process of planning your trip. On to error handling: Hostels.com likes to keep errors simple, and avoids some altogether. You will notice the website pops up a simple dialog box indicating the value entered in the "Arriving" field (which is made even more helpful by an animated calendar) is not a valid choice, and very respectfully notifies the reader of his/her mistake. If the user continues with a search, the website will be unable to find any dates. This is consistent with the error message; however, I feel the website should have reset the date field in order to prevent this from occurring. Lastly, the writing style is obviously targeted towards people who are inclined to "backpack" across the world, and more specifically, the 18-25 yr old demographic. It uses very descriptive language when discussing potential hostel destinations (see the "Featured Destination: Amsterdam" on the front page).

High-level concepts (information architecture, navigation, audience appeal, privacy protection, credibility, etc.)
The information on the website is organized very well, in my opinion, as shown by the good and consistent use of colors, heading, and bold. The website appeals directly to its aforementioned audience by providing multiple articles on topics relating to what the audience may want to do using the website. Navigation is //extremely// simple, and provides a good "design dialog to yield closure". Notice how simple the process is:

Step 4: Pay!


Additionally, the website does not require that you create an account, and therefore will not save your credit information, which yields good privacy protection. The checkout process itself uses a secure connection (notice the HTTPS), however some elements on the checkout page are not secure, which prevents Google Chrome from highlighting the address bar in green (a known symbol of a secure connection). This could be changed to provide a more comfortable checkout process for the user.

All in all, the Hostels.com website is fairly well designed. I could find no critical flaws and I am very impressed with its very direct approach to booking rooms.