Flight School's new website - feedback needed

dwalt

dwalt

Pre-takeoff checklist
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DWalt
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KPDK
So I just finished redoing the website for the flight school I trained at/currently rent from. We just took it live, but I'd love to get some feedback from some aviation-minded folk...thanks!

www.skybnd.com
 
dwalt said:
So I just finished redoing the website for the flight school I trained at/currently rent from. We just took it live, but I'd love to get some feedback from some aviation-minded folk...thanks!

www.skybnd.com
Click to expand...

Good job. Easy to navigate and clear. I wish I could rent from that school! You have a Saratoga!
 
dwalt said:
So I just finished redoing the website for the flight school I trained at/currently rent from. We just took it live, but I'd love to get some feedback from some aviation-minded folk...thanks!

www.skybnd.com
Click to expand...

My two cents. Please don't take offense.


My first impression was "Wow, TOO MANY words!!!", I would never read all that. For some reason, the way the website loaded on my browser (Chrome) was only a bunch of text for a long time, then some buttons, and finally the pictures/slide show up above.

You might check and see if it loads slow for other browsers, but, that was a bit of a turn-off.

Secondly, those little "pop-up" buttons at the bottom of the banner picture that popup the buttons are hard to find. (Edit: Whoops, I just discovered they aren't buttons at all, but they are popup thumbnails that just move the banner picture slide show back and forth. Not sure the purpose of them on a home page.)

Thirdly, the text needs proofread on the main page. I am not a grammar-nazi or spelling-nazi, but on a page of a professional organization, it needs to look professional.

Take an introductory flight. For $99 plus sales tax you can see what it is like to be a pilot. You sit left seat in the aircraft and are at the controls. Of coursethe instructor is sitting next to you. You can do as much or as little as you wish. Your flight instructor will be guiding you every step of the way. Introductory flights are a great way to find out if you really want to be a pilot.

Stop by a flight school and talk with the instructors and managers. We encourage you to visit as many flight schools as possible. Once their, you will notice if the offices are clean and organized. Is the flight school formal or informal? Are the instructors experienced or recently graduated. We all take flying serious, but does the school make flying fun? We are not the only school at this airport, but we believe SKYBOUND AVIATION is the best flight school at this airport.

Hang out at the airport. Talk to the folks who fly. Trust us when we tell you pilots are not afraid to tell you how much fun it is and what you must do in order to become a pilot.

Our offices are located at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport (KPDK) in the main administration building near the tower and playground. We are in close proximity to Buckhead, Johnson’s Ferry, Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, Druid Hills, Downtown and much more.
Click to expand...


Hopefully constructive ideas.
 
spiderweb said:
Good job. Easy to navigate and clear. I wish I could rent from that school! You have a Saratoga!
Click to expand...

Thanks much! It's a great little flight school.

JoseCuervo said:
My two cents. Please don't take offense.


My first impression was "Wow, TOO MANY words!!!", I would never read all that. For some reason, the way the website loaded on my browser (Chrome) was only a bunch of text for a long time, then some buttons, and finally the pictures/slide show up above.

You might check and see if it loads slow for other browsers, but, that was a bit of a turn-off.

Secondly, those little "pop-up" buttons at the bottom of the banner picture that popup the buttons are hard to find. (Edit: Whoops, I just discovered they aren't buttons at all, but they are popup thumbnails that just move the banner picture slide show back and forth. Not sure the purpose of them on a home page.)

Thirdly, the text needs proofread on the main page. I am not a grammar-nazi or spelling-nazi, but on a page of a professional organization, it needs to look professional.




Hopefully constructive ideas.
Click to expand...

No offense taken here...I'm just the coder. I agree that it needs some content-tweaks. My main concern was getting what they wanted up. Now that that's the case, I agree that all of the content needs to be looked at and trimmed down.
 
Yep, it takes a loooooooong time (25 seconds on Chrome, 30+ for IE 8.0) to load everything. Setting up all those drop-down menus and that Flash banner up top are the probable causes - maybe 3-4 pics would work better than 11.

I think the $99 Discovery Flight deserves its own separate box, rather than being lost in the rest of the text. It needs to stand out even more than with it leading off the text box now.

Speaking of text, the "Where to Start" portion is overly fussy - a brief description of why Skybound is special, and 2-3 sentences describing where the facility is on the airport and in relation to the Atlanta area. That's it. Two or three paragraphs of 2-3 sentences each would be much easier to digest - as you did with the Ground School/CES and Now Hiring headers.

I have a feeling your client said "we want everything on our web site!" and you obliged! Now comes the culling process.
 
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Would not load on my iPad even after waiting 30 seconds.
 
Interior shots or lists of instruments and whether or not the aircraft are IFR capable might be nice for advanced rating students.

Site looks pretty nice on an iPhone, which was a surprise. Kinda rare. Drop downs take a while to animate on low processor power devices.
 
Notes taken on load time - addressing this with the client now. Told them they have to pic 4 of the header images :)
 
On the positive side, I really like the overall layout - it's clean and fresh, and even looks good on a smartphone as DenverPilot noted.

And, I know it's hokey... but I also like that the operation has named the planes, LOL.
 
I agree than nobody reads the "words", but then I am not offended by their existence. When I come to a website of a school, I want specific things: Location (airport code), telephone, fleet with rates. This website works, although I have to ignore quite a bit, like the HUEG banner on top with distracting animations (why do people even do those). You get props for browser compatibility. Although the layout is weird, at least I can reach all the links and read the blessed phone number, heck even copy-paste it!

One simple thing: replace the exotic bullet points with something more mundane. My computer does not have the font to display them, so I get unicode squares.

Also, mark rates wet or dry. Arrow for $155/hr wet seems reasonable, even inexpensive, but then SR22 for $210 may be way cheap for wet. But if it's dry, who the heck rents an Arrow for $155 dry, right? So I cannot guess what your prices are.

P.S. Twitter link is AWOL
 
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zaitcev said:
I agree than nobody reads the "words", but then I am not offended by their existence. When I come to a website of a school, I want specific things: Location (airport code), telephone, fleet with rates. This website works, although I have to ignore quite a bit, like the HUEG banner on top with distracting animations (why do people even do those). You get props for browser compatibility. Although the layout is weird, at least I can reach all the links and read the blessed phone number, heck even copy-paste it!

One simple thing: replace the exotic bullet points with something more mundane. My computer does not have the font to display them, so I get unicode squares.

Also, mark rates wet or dry. Arrow for $155/hr wet seems reasonable, even inexpensive, but then SR22 for $210 may be way cheap for wet. But if it's dry, who the heck rents an Arrow for $155 dry, right? So I cannot guess what your prices are.

P.S. Twitter link is AWOL
Click to expand...

Great point on the pricing. All prices are WET - I'll add this on.

Also, I think the animation makes the transition nice, but maybe if I extend the time between transitions it would make it a bit less distracting.

I'll look into the bullets, but short of writing a new style and applying it to each bullet, it may not be worth the time :).

Also curious, could you elaborate on what makes the layout weird? Perhaps I can do a simple tweak to make it less-so.

Thanks for the feedback!
 
denverpilot said:
Interior shots or lists of instruments and whether or not the aircraft are IFR capable might be nice for advanced rating students.

Site looks pretty nice on an iPhone, which was a surprise. Kinda rare. Drop downs take a while to animate on low processor power devices.
Click to expand...

Great call on equipment list/bird certs.

Glad you like the iPhone layout! Will look into the animations.
 
flightwriter said:
Yep, it takes a loooooooong time (25 seconds on Chrome, 30+ for IE 8.0) to load everything. Setting up all those drop-down menus and that Flash banner up top are the probable causes - maybe 3-4 pics would work better than 11.

I think the $99 Discovery Flight deserves its own separate box, rather than being lost in the rest of the text. It needs to stand out even more than with it leading off the text box now.

Speaking of text, the "Where to Start" portion is overly fussy - a brief description of why Skybound is special, and 2-3 sentences describing where the facility is on the airport and in relation to the Atlanta area. That's it. Two or three paragraphs of 2-3 sentences each would be much easier to digest - as you did with the Ground School/CES and Now Hiring headers.

I have a feeling your client said "we want everything on our web site!" and you obliged! Now comes the culling process.
Click to expand...

Great points here, especially about the discovery flight...thanks!

One of the best things is their pricing:

-All prices are wet
-no minimums
-no overnight fees

This probably deserves a shout out on the homepage too
 
Hmm, kinda odd that ya'll say Chrome takes that long. I have about a 2-3 second load time for everything, on Firefox.

Agree with changing the discovery flight info. Make it concise and easy to see. It should be the first thing somebody sees, to grab their attention. Make a prospective customer really excited/interested when reading it.

I like the high-quality pictures on the banner, but for me, it's just a bit too big. I would also make the transitions slower, so it's not as distracting.

I think increasing the text font on the pages would make it look a bit better overall. With the large banner, large pictures, and big font on the menu, the small font makes it kinda hard to follow.

And yup, the spelling and grammar needs some work.

At the bottom, the "map" link is broken. It just returns you to the top of the page. Along those lines, I would consider putting some more airport information on the "pilot resources" page. Maybe a link to the Airnav page and airport website.

Kudos on the "floating" menu bar on the left side. I LOVE THOSE! It makes navigation sooooo much easier than scrolling back to the top or bottom every time.

Overall, definitely better than most websites. Just a few minor changes and additions and and you'll be golden.
 
Too much stuff loading. If you really want to have huge gigantic images at the top of the page dont' make me load more then I can even see at once.

Make my browser load one image -- then when it's time to display another one for me -- AJAX it and display it when it's done. No reason for me to be waiting on things that I won't be seeing for a minute.
 
Here's an example of an extremely well done aviation club website, IMHO...

http://www.ia-kapa.com/

All the info is there. Front page is full of activities and current events for existing club members, important info topics are one click off the front page, documentation someone might want to refer to later is PDF'd for download into real documentation not just a web page, link to online scheduling is right at the top, etc.

Anything for any particular "audience" is there but laid out such that nothing stands obnoxiously, and there is a fancy graphical link bar at the top but also a text link bar along the bottom that allows for browser compatibility.
 
It looks nice, but I feel bombarded. There's too much stuff and too many special-effects.
 
Not a big fan of the top banner image. I clicked on the "fleet" page and it loaded and then right when I started looking at it the page moved down for the HUGE graphic on top. The other thing and not sure it's possible but being able to look at the next aircraft in the fleet...it's early but in order to look at the next one I had to click back and then click the next one. What would be really cool and you may have it is a "Compare/Contrast" of the planes and just have a big text box of what airplane has what feature (HP/Retract/Fixed Prop/) Or something like what bestbuy.com when you're looking for cameras the user can compare two different ones together.
 
JoseCuervo said:
My two cents. Please don't take offense.


My first impression was "Wow, TOO MANY words!!!", I would never read all that. For some reason, the way the website loaded on my browser (Chrome) was only a bunch of text for a long time, then some buttons, and finally the pictures/slide show up above.

You might check and see if it loads slow for other browsers, but, that was a bit of a turn-off.

Secondly, those little "pop-up" buttons at the bottom of the banner picture that popup the buttons are hard to find. (Edit: Whoops, I just discovered they aren't buttons at all, but they are popup thumbnails that just move the banner picture slide show back and forth. Not sure the purpose of them on a home page.)

Thirdly, the text needs proofread on the main page. I am not a grammar-nazi or spelling-nazi, but on a page of a professional organization, it needs to look professional.




Hopefully constructive ideas.
Click to expand...

My thoughts as well. You do nice work though.
 
dwalt said:
So I just finished redoing the website for the flight school I trained at/currently rent from. We just took it live, but I'd love to get some feedback from some aviation-minded folk...thanks!

www.skybnd.com
Click to expand...

I hate globs of content that won't scroll away.

Animation is distracting. Lose the animation stuff unless the animation itself provides useful information. Otherwise it's just flash and not substance.
 
+1 to all the comments you are getting above. Just seems to be a bit much to navigate and read. Wow you have a lot of instructors and they are priced high. Is that the normal rate around you. Its not important just thought I would ask. Also on the super decathlon it cost more to go upside down? Does it cost more to operate that way or are you just charging a premium for it? Seems like nickel and dimming a bit, but if it works that ok too. Anyway it really looks good, just a bit busy.
 
Lots of great comments here, thanks. Bringing them all to the client.

The top banner is something they really wanted, but I'll look into smoothing out the animations. I think the biggest thing is the amount of content...which will be worked on.

Great idea regarding scrolling to the "next aircraft".

As far as the rates go, I'm just the messenger, but for this are they seem to be one of the best, esp with no minimums.
 
denverpilot said:
Here's an example of an extremely well done aviation club website, IMHO...

http://www.ia-kapa.com/
Click to expand...
IA's page is outstanding. I pretended to be an aspiring renter and found all I needed.

The separate page for rates in PDF may not be terribly tablet-compatible, but works for me. I guess they do it because it's easy to update in our infrationary world.
 
On the graphic on the left with the menus, it is always blocking the "24/7 Call Us" above the phone number. Also, any way to get that graphic to not go all the way to the top? Seems to me it would be much cleaner if there were a way to keep it off the top banner
 
Every page, when loads, drops down after top portion loads. It can be annoying especially if you are trying to read and site loads up a bit slow. Make page headers static, without any page movement, and it would be ok.
 
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