Delta Launch New Website

The Delta website has always been better in many ways from its competitors, such as American or United. They have offered a clean contemporary look and design to their site for a while, and this reincarnation is no different. We have to say, it’s a truly good look to the site, which isn’t just skin deep. The brand appears solid and consistent with the rest of their marketing material. The homepage is enticing, although does take a few seconds to work out the navigation. For example, for a new customer, who would have to navigate the site the hardest, they would struggle to see what Delta’s offerings are, as the info is located on a small easy-to-miss drop down menu at the top entitled  ‘Travelling with Us”.

Good design doesn’t mean good product though. Navigation is the big issue here. Everything on the site seems to be two clicks further away than it should. A simple solution would be offering sub-menu drop downs. The graphic heavy pages take a little longer to load than normal, offering for a slightly disjointed experience. What’s more, when you are one page deep into the site, there goes the commercial opportunity to book easily. There is a missed opportunity for a ‘book’ widget, which allows you to book directly from whatever page you are on. Instead is a link to bring you back to a booking page.

There are a heap of icons, especially in the booking process, which could appear useful, but actually are a little confusing and misleading. The booking engine is solid, but for example, booking a flight to HNL from LHR, I couldn’t fully work out where I was going to be stopping, how many plane changes there were and actually what was offer on each flight. (As for example, a flat bed icon may appear on the flight, but this doesn’t mean it’s available on every single leg of the trip)

But to the good things. Seat maps that actually seem accurate, and offer information for any happy self-proclaimed plane geek to enjoy, although most would argue there isn’t enough detail/info on these. What we like is the filtering tool on booking, allowing you to weed out some of the countless connecting flights to find the right one for you, dependant on whether you need WiFi or a flat bed on AVOD.

The conclusion? We love the design, but it’s been too heavily mapped so there are too many links, pages, devices and information is something you have to dig for. Understandable they can’t have super easy navigation like Virgin America, as their routes, and armada of airplanes means that nothing is really ever just ‘that easy’. Hopefully they will iron out the kinks and smooth out the end-user’s interaction to produce a smoother, faster and easier site to navigate.