Today I am going to take a break from design sights once again and compare two very popular sights for booking travel information. Orbitz and Expedia are two websites with one shared main purpose, for the user to be able book flight, hotel, and car information all at once, or separately along with the options to book cruise and activities for anywhere in the world.
Both Expedia and Orbitz have navigation bars at the top or their home webpage’s. On the Expedia website it links the user to the Home, Vacation Packages, Hotels, Flights, Cruises, Activities, Deals/Offers, and Rewards webpage’s. The Deals and Offers text on the navigation bar is a different color than the rest so it has a higher hierarchy than the other navigations probably because they want the users to draw attention to that specific webpage. What I don’t like about this navigation bar is that there are vertical slash marks that group the navigation links and I don’t find that to be necessary, I think it would look better if it were after each title of the navigation links. On the Orbitz navigation bar users have the opportunity to link to the Quick Search, Vacation Packages, Hotels, Flights, Cars, Cruises, Activities and Deals.
All of these titles have the same hierarchy and are positioned and separated equally unlike the navigation bar on the Expedia website. Once you’ve clicked on one of the navigation titles and are taken to its specific webpage the title on both websites are either colored or highlighted so you know that you are on the specific navigation webpage. Also on both websites the navigation bars stay the same as you navigate to different webpage’s within each websites, even after you’ve clicked on advertising links.
Since both Expedia and Orbitz cover all of those travel topics there’s a lot of information that needs to be on their webpage’s. This makes it a little confusing when looking for specific information. On Expedia it’s easier to get some information without having to do a search for it like on Orbitz for information like information on the hotels that they are affiliated with.
Since there is a lot of information on both websites the type used for both are sans-serifs fonts to make the information easier to read. There are many A head, B head and Body Copy going on both sites but on Orbitz I enjoy the grid structure and how they separate the information given. On Expedia it’s more cluttered because there might be more than the needed information for the users.
Like stated before the grid structure on the Orbitz website is very clean and consistent, all the information on each website is usually placed strategically so similar information will be found at the same places. On the Expedia website it seems as if there are about 3 different grid structures used for their webpage’s , this inconsistency gets confusing at time when you want to find similar information on a different webpage.
On both websites their concepts for imagry are about the same because they relate the images to their content so it mostly consists of vacation images. The Orbitz website has less images than the Expedia website, which I find to me more bland but it may be best because it makes the website less busy and straightforward. Even though the Orbitz website is very straightforward I do enjoy the images and the placement of those images on the Expedia website. They even complement the color palette used in the Expedia website which is blue and yellow, and since vacation picture usually consist of blue, green, orange and yellow colors all the colors complement each other. The Orbitz websites’ color palette consists of white, shades of blue and little green, these color were probably chosen because they are very relaxing and vacation like alike the Expedia website.
Orbitz and Expedia are relatively search engines for vacation and travel bookings. Orbitz is very straightforward and more functional than Expedia because it just has its core needs for the users and not much more. Expedia gives more form and function because it has more of a visual effect that guides you through the website. Personally I would like the form of the Expedia website and the functionality of the Orbitz website so the perfect website for their purposes would be a mixture of the two.
Check them both out at: expedia.com and orbitz.com
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