IRCTC’s New Website & It’s Usability Issues
IRCTC’s train ticket reservation system has enabled an easy and transparent ticket booking to everyone. It has transformed the railway ticket booking from waiting in the long queue into booking tickets from the comforts of your home. According to Times Now, IRCTC which runs one of the largest e-commerce sites, has around 3 crore registered users and the target is to tap each of the seven lakh tickets that are booked daily.
IRCTC’s website has now evolved from what it used to be to the current improved site now. The login issues and the peak hour traffic handling by IRCTC used to be a nightmare. And the ’N’ number of tries to book a tatkal ticket previously has also been improved.
Confirmation Probability
Confirmation (CNF) Probability is a wonderful feature integration in the new site where we could see the RAC and WL confirmation probability in ticket booking.
And it’s also very thoughtful to have food companies to deliver meals on the train.
As a UX Designer by profession, I see some big User Experience (UX) Issues in the new site, which is really affecting the usability & Customer Experience, Few of which are listed below.
Complex Navigation & IA
There is too much of hidden navigation and longer user journey to book a ticket. The user needs to interact multiple times to check availability for different class & train.
Tatkal selection is separated from journey data, FROM & TO, So it’s really difficult to navigate while booking a Tatkal ticket.
Security question on Tatkal ticket booking is another big blocking issue for the users.
Passenger Details form
Travel Passenger Details form is very simple & straightforward in the old site, the New design is very complex & user needs to do multiple click & interaction to fill more than one passenger detail.
Need Help? Ask Disha — Dear Disha Please get away from IRCTC
The new #AskDisha chat bot feature is so annoying in ticket availability page. It is placed by default on top of ticket cost & CHECK AVAILABILITY Action buttons. Ad’s are another big pain below Ask Disha button.
Ad-Free IRCTC
3rd party Ad’s are placed on top & In between train listing & availability. Which is too distracting. A User needs to scroll multiple up & down to see all trains & availability. Top primery are of site is filled with ad, which is really effecting site usability.
We can see IRCTC itself running ad’s platform for 3rd party ad’s, IRCTC is a Gov run entity which should not do this to affect the end user experience. As frequent & End user I expect #AdFreeIRCTC.
Mobile Friendly Design
Mobile internet users in India are approximately 478 million by June 2018, Mobile Ticket booking is also equally growing.
But IRCTC Mobile screens are not in that good shape, the Mobile UI is loaded with ads, the Navigations are very hidden. The Ease of using the website is highly affected by these issues.
Good Design Is Good Business
Its good to see the government websites and government-run entity’s website taking a pivot and coming up with visually appealing websites. It would be a paradigm shift if they also concentrate on the actual user experience and address the user issues in the websites.
