I also thought it was only showing Niagara falls. Turns out it begins with the cheapest destination. There is a next button on the right to view other destinations.
I am probably not their target customer -- I will just never use this sort of thing. I'm curious to know who this is targeted to.
I don't need ideas on where to travel. Recommendations on destination come from family and friends ... the game is then to fit it into budget / vacation days / schedule, etc.
Perhaps you're not the target user for this specific product: the idea is to show people what their destination & accommodation options are at a given budget. It's particularly useful for people who like the idea of taking a trip for Valentine's day but find the process of manually searching flight & accommodation options too slow/hard.
Though it hasn't got there yet, the plan with the main Adioso site is to do what you described; if you have a destination, budget and vague timeframe in mind, Adioso will monitor options and prices, and alert you when a deal becomes available.
It's international but it still only allows me to select an airport about 20 hours drive away. I'm not sure what their logic is in self-selecting an airport in a country that is outside of my usual area while I'm traveling?
This microsite is the first product built on Adioso's enhanced platform, which will enable us to add more airlines and destinations - including Canada - real soon. Stay tuned!
It look me a while to find the submit button - it's camouflaged against the background and in front of a bookmark shape...
Also I suspect the minimum price point ($500/£250) is too high. The text of the site is challenging the user to spend more ("How much do you <3 me?") so it will be more difficult than usual for users to select the minimum (or in their words: "A little").
They'd do better to make the submit button actually look like a button, and to set the minimum to $0 (even though no flights will ever be found for that price).
Adioso strikes me as a company with little social sense. Asking how much I 'value' my girlfriend is just... off. And similarly, the fact their normal site actually _admits_ that it has a confusing interface and asks if you want help understanding it is just the oddest UX design I've ever heard of.
Had to go look at the main site again as this isn't my recollection of it. So yes, there is a small "show search help" link under the main search entry, but I don't see this as an admission of a confusing interface. Feels more like helps there if you need it, but unobtrusive if you don't.
I think in the problem domain the Adioso guys are in, this is a fair trade off. Not all first time users would understand the concept of natural language search and would instead be looking for "from and to" dates.
What's you suggestion to improve the main site? I think it's pretty good.
Go to http://adioso.com/search?q=A+hard+search+query in an incognito window or similar - you have to have not visited before. A bar comes up at the top of the page saying that the interface "can be a little confusing".
I have no thoughts on the interface per se, I just think that if you have to admit that your interface is confusing, you've already lost.
That only happens if you end up with no results (eg, you didn't really grasp what to search for). Eg: http://adioso.com/search?q=france -- does not show that bar.
Jewelers run similar type promotions all the time, Apple spam out emails every big holiday letting me know what I can get my loved ones this time round, it's a pretty common angle. The how much do you love is just a good metaphor for the price slider and fits the holiday they are promoting around.
Hopefully most visitors to the mini-site will realize that it's tongue-in-cheek and that the chaps at Adioso don't really believe that love is quantifiable. Although some might be peeved because $500 isn't a small enough valuation of their relationship.
