Please don’t start. I am not your man!
We’re talking UI/UX and you’re QUOTING THE BIBLE for me?
Please tell me who has been destroyed by LACK OF KNOWLEDGE here?
NB: You were’nt certain, you were ‘thinking’?
I’m sure you’re doing a beautiful job at IROKO Partners Limited. Cheers bro.
But please refrain from starting a comment with the following;
That’s an arrogant procession. SMH!
Now for further clarification Sir!
…pay attention to what users do, not what a designer/programmer says. - Abdulhaqq Sulaiman
You’ll be amazed how many times that ‘Union-Jack’ is clicked a day. So let’s agree it represents the language the website’s in, I would also ‘think’ I could switch language to French, or Russian or Arabic by clicking on the ‘Union Jack’.
Regards.
Fluff over substance. The ultimate UX/UI role model is Google.com. Practically the same design since 1999 but lots of user intelligence since then.
Hotels.ng needs to think the same way. Focus on how to use customer service, intelligence and insights to help people book easier. For example:
someone looking for a hotel needs a hotel in a specific location within a specific price range with specific amenities. They got the search bar right on the front page but not the rest.
most nigerian users are using mobile phones with not much bandwidth. Why do hotel pages load large photos all at the same time? Why not thumbnails and give the user the option of clicking on a thumbnail to zoom it if interested ? .
Also, I don’t think hotels.ng does enough in the area of marketing. They could do a whole lot more especially since Jovago and its mercenaries are really high expense competitors.
Finally, they really need to have an African expansion strategy.
I tried to book with them before and was unable because first they havnt got a mobile application. Their desktop app fails to validate numbers begining with 090 and to me its just all a mess. I wanted to use a pro Nigerian brand and it is just a mess. I use Jovago and its spotless. These simple things dont need the smartest person to fix them. Must say I was quite dissapointed.
Baba! Calm down. All hotel.ng has to do is disable HTTP on the server and enable HTTPS. Then purchase an SSL cert, the cost of a cert for a single is website is about $70 a year.
The last time I configured HTTPS, I had to purchase a certificate, install it on my server, add some SSL configurations to the configuration file and then rewrite (not “disable”) all HTTP traffic to HTTPS. Not the other way around
The cost of purchasing SSL certificates and cost of implementation of HTTPS notwithstanding, this post was written to bring to the fore the negligence on the part of some site owners (especially does who collect and process personal data from their customers or audience). Internet attacks, eavesdropping, and outright theft of personal data are common place and I think it is irresponsible for any company to collect person data from the public without any recourse to the safety of the information while in transit.
A PositiveSSL certificate costs about $9 per year and offers very strong protection compared to not having any SSL certificate at all. One can even use a self-signed certificate (for intranet or personal purposes). So whether trusted or self-signed, just install a certificate and implement HTTPS. The more expensive ones are expensive because of extra addons such as organisation verification.
If you regard your customer with high esteem, then you will do all what it takes to keep their personal information (which were disclosed to you in trust) safe and away from the prying eyes of some miscreants.
As at 4:19PM, 23rd March 2016, I can confirm that the dummy “Union Jack” and “Naira” have disappeared from the Hotels.ng site.
I would guess that this post is creating the right impact it was intended to. I would also guess that the geniuses at Hotels.ng are awoken and will implement HTTPS on the site soonest.
Let’s keep watch on the site and report as soon as you see the beautiful “green bar” or “green padlock” on your address bars.
Self-signed certs will produce the same security as trusted certs, but it will cause the user’s browser to display a security warning message. Self-signed certificates are not recognized CAs, you need a digital certificate when implementing TLS on public systems.
Interesting. Someone please tell those folks they can now get free SSL certificates through Letsencrypt.org. They are only valid for 3 months, but you can absolutely write a shell script to renew them with a cron job every three months since you can manage them from a CLI - set and forget. As for the other cosmetic problems, those look like quick wins.
LOL! Unless this was a sarcasm, I beg to disagree sir. Hotels.ng is a Nigerian site (so by default, they would display the page in English and charge in Naira). I, the visitor, know that I’m a Nigerian (so I know that my currency is Naira and that I should pay/would be charged in my local currency - not dollars or pound). I can see that the site is presented in English (so there is no need to show me the Union Jack). Now, let’s assume that a foreign-language visitor appears on the site and wants to book a hotel in Nigeria, he/she might begin to search for a language switcher. Imagine the frustration when he/she realises that the icons were mere dummies.
The “convention used all over the world” is that website display language and currency icons only when they are functional switchers and not mere dummies. See http://www.diamondbank.com/ for an example of language switcher or translator. It is also misleading to display languages in a language switcher with flags. Most commonly-spoken languages transcend boundaries or countries and some countries have major languages which cannot be represented by a single flag. Hence, the use of the actual names of the languages (not flags).
Lastly, the fact that the dummy icons were taken down shows that they weren’t necessary or well implemented in the first place.
