App Critique: Tripadvisor’s Detail Page & Review Function
In the last article, we discussed the exploring experience of the Tripadvisor based on the homepage and Trip page. Then we decided to review the experience of making the further decision and writing the review, which are mainly about experiencing and sharing the world.
Detailed information page
After users decide their destination, they need to find some detailed information that includes hotels, sight spots, and restaurants. They are able to browse those places with more details by tapping the quick access on the top of the homepage. On these pages, there are two useful functions at the bottom of those pages: Filter and Map.
Filter
This function aims to help users find their desired targets quickly and precisely. However, it is a little different from other app’s filters. When pressing the filter button, users need to choose their preference at a new page instead of a drop-down menu on the current page, which might lead to redundant operations, such as going back.
It is worth mentioning that the interaction of selecting the price is amazing. If you drag the dot, the bar chart will appear and show the proportion of the results in this price range. Besides the colors also give users the affordance that which part is selected.
Map
The map function is very convenient for users to know where the certain hotel/restaurant/sight spot is and where they are dense. On the map page, the location of these places can be narrowed down to the street when users zoom in and press “search this area”. Besides, if the user chooses a hotel, there is another map that shows the location of restaurants and sight spots around. Although this function helps users make a decision to a certain extent, it can still be improved by building the connection between different maps. It is likely that users want to find a hotel with many attractions or restaurants around, but now, they have to switch the different maps to find the desired place. It is not very reasonable to show the location of other places only after users making a selection.
After the user selects an option, they will go to the description page of this place.
Top tab
Compared with some apps (such as Amazon), Tripadvisor reduces the difficulty for users to process information by offering the top bar which is like a portal to different parts of this page so that the users can directly find what they want to know and quickly get the information.
Add to a trip
If users like this place, they just need to tap the heart button on the right side then they can find it in their trips folder. The motion effect of this interaction is pretty cute： after users’ tapping, the heart will drop to the Trips icon at the bottom, which gives them the hint where they can find it.
But how to remove this “heart” is confusing. If you heart the place but you don’t choose the trip folder, the only way to cancel the heart is first to go to the Trip page and then tap the heart again (if you choose the folder, you need to tap the folder again to remove that place). That is not intuitive at all, because most apps teach us that double press can undo our operation. In addition, even if you already “heart” this place, when you press the heart again, it shows the same page, which might let users doubt themselves — — “Did I press the heart just now?”
Summary of the detailed information page
Summary of the detailed information page: Overall, Tripadvisor did think a lot about how to reduce the difficulty for users to process different information, but some novel interaction will increase the cognitive burden of users, which need to be paid more attention.
Review Function
When filtering and selecting hotels or desired destinations, the reviews from others are weighted heavily by the viewers. So let’s talk about how to build a better user experience and make the review function more valuable not only to users but also to the platform.
The viewing review experience
As viewers, their goal is to find relevant information as quickly as possible and make their decisions accordingly. So the key elements of this interaction are effective and efficient. When viewing reviews of a place, the viewers tend to browse several reviews to identify a pattern and more cases of similar information that will help them establish a pattern. However, the way Tripadvisor presents the reviews is far from satisfying.
The reviews are listed only based on the time of writing, which makes sense since the situation described in an old review may not represent the current situation. But as a UGC (User-Generated Content) platform, there exist many fake reviews that tend to mislead the viewers. The reviews are not being listed regarding the trustworthiness or the quality. All the reviews are treated equally. Although the trustworthiness of contributors is endorsed by the number of contributions they have made and the times of being voted helpful (presented below their username), the viewers have to constantly be conscious of whether the reviews are trustworthy themselves and distinguish the reliability of the information, which reduces the efficiency of viewing. Tripadvisor could have presented the most qualified reviews on the top, which helps the viewers reduce the cognitive load.
What Tripadvisor does is selecting the keywords from reviews, listing on top of all the reviews, and presenting the popular mentions. But this processed information may make the viewers feel impersonal since it loses the human side of the information, which is considered important for a UGC platform. Besides, the viewers hardly can distinguish whether the information is trustworthy by reading the information condensed by the system.
The writing review experience
For the content contributors, basically they have two goals. One is being helpful to other users and getting positive feedback, which is mental encouragement. Another incentive is obtaining material rewards. For the owner of the platform, trying to fulfill the first goal of contributors as much as possible is wiser, since the material incentive is like a black hole at the expense of reducing the income of the company. So how to help the contributor obtain the mental encouragement through contributing content? Make writing a review as intuitive as possible and create high-quality content with ease. The content will be more likely to be voted helpful and spread in the community.
Create Easy Access of the Review Function. There are two ways of writing a review. One is from a listing page, scroll down to the Reviews section, and click the “Write a Review” button. Another way is from the homepage or the user’s profile page, selecting “+” on the bottom right of the page.
The problem with creating reviews on the listing page is the accessibility of the button. There are two styles of the button for “Write a Review” for different categories of the contents. The buttons are also placed differently. These inconsistencies may confuse the users. Besides, there is no quick access to the review function on the listing page. The inconvenience would probably hinder the user from contributing the reviews. The “Write a Review” button is placed in the middle of the listing page, making it harder to be found out. Tripadvisor could learn from other apps such as Dianping, a successful UGC platform, the Chinese counterpart of Yelp, on which the UX of commenting is far more smooth. The quick access positioning to the button of review could be found on each relevant page.
Empower the Contributors. First, Tripadvisor doesn’t do much to empower users who are trying to contribute content. When users are trying to write a review, there is no hint for what kind of information they can fill in. The aspects that can be commented have to be figured out by the users themselves, which increases the cognitive load. Second, the “Add a picture” function isn’t smart enough. The way to edit the picture is constrained. The picture can only be cropped to a couple of fixed ratios and there is no filter provided, which impairs the potential high-quality content to be created. The users may feel disempowered. Their willingness to contribute may be worn off when they are trying hard to contribute but end up with not so satisfying results.
Second, the viewers can do nothing but vote helpful to a review, whereas on Dianping, the viewer can like, favorite, and even comment on reviews. The possibility of more interaction between the users is created.
Summary of the Review Function
Helping viewers to effectively and efficiently find the information they need and empowering contributors to create high-quality reviews are two important aspects of user acquisition and retention which are pivotal to the success of a UGC platform. When increasing numbers of high-quality content created by contributors, the stickiness of the viewers would be established and then increased. They would in return encourage the contributors via “Vote Helpful” or even commenting on the reviews. This positive interaction would bring more users to the platform; therefore, attracts more business cooperators to the platform. In this way, all the parties benefit.
Conclusion
The mission of Tripadvisor is to inspire and enable people to confidently explore, experience, and share our world. In this article, the Detailed information section is concerning more on exploring and experience and the review part is focusing on sharing.
There are indeed some outstanding designs, such as “showing the proportion of the results in this price range” and the motion effects of “Add to Trips”. In our opinion, these features can increase the satisfaction of the users, but when not being presented, their satisfaction wouldn’t decrease. However, the handy review function is expected by users, when the usability of this kind of function is low, users will feel dissatisfied. The overall satisfaction of users will drop. Therefore, Tripadvisor could consider giving more attention to the basic and expected functions while trying to surprise the users through some shining points.
