Summary

We have decided to take impulsifly offline.

Recap:
- took about 3 months to ramp traffic up to 200 visitors / month
- return flight was not immediately intuitive for everyone
- received surprisingly good anecdotal responses, surprised to find that a number of visitors clicked through to book flights
- never formally contacted the airlines to organize data feed & commission.
- was approached by an ad agency looking to broaden their asia pacific website base.
- reached peak of several thousand visitors during Pope visit.
- not long after, Virgin blocked our data scraper.

Gained:
- Technologies - GWT, SpringMVC, HSQLDB
- SEO - delayed gratification. 30 minutes/day goes a very long way.
- Design - listen to users, but more importantly, OBSERVE. Analytics is invaluable. Involve user testing ASAP (friends) - start feedback loop early.
- Misc - register domain, host, maintain (impulsifly is arguably not a good name because it is prone to mistakes, but it was the best we could come up with)

There are avenues which we hadn't fully explored, but other opportunities have emerged so we have decided to cut impulsifly in pursuit of these other options.
I'll post more information here as we progress, but the profit of the current project we are working on is inversely proportional to its popularity.

A snap shot of impulsifly's main screen:

Are we back?

Hey our scrapers are working again!

Edit: 9/9/08
It's blocked again. Doh.

Uh Oh

One of the carriers seem to have our data gatherer blocked.

This is going to be tough, lets see if we could convince them otherwise. in the mean time, we wouldnt be able to provide you with the proper fare comparison we had promised, so please use one of the other flight aggregators instead.

I know our service is so much faster and easier to use than the other guys (heh), but I would much rather you use them instead of getting an incomplete comparison from us until we get this sorted.

Judging by appearance

Google analytics show a number of visitors gets 'bounced' at the homepage. Bounce here means they did not proceed to use the service (either by closing the browser or navigating to another site - like hitting the back button).

I don't have anything more to work with, but I think it has something to do with our layout. I'm guessing the homepage isn't generating enough excitement for the visitors to click through.

However I honestly believe this spartan layout is really nice (and have received some good feedback precisely because it's so minimalist)... so rather than not generating excitement, I am pointing my finger at trust. I think when visitors are at a new website, it is as (if not more) important that they feel they can expect what will happen. With our homepage, the referred visitors like it because they know us and (i think) trusts us. But there is nothing there to make a completely new visitor feel safe.

So I have added a screen shot to the front page, I think it demonstrates some functionalities and gives the visitor some reassurance of what can be expected. (Well that was a lot of deliberation to add a simple pic!)

Logo?

I think it's about time we get a logo. Got any ideas?

Missing Ballina Virgin

Someone pointed out that flights between Ballina Byron & Sydney for Virgin is missing. Thanks!! It has been added and data should start appearing in a day or two. I hope you find what you are after :)

Be Practical

One particular compliment we've been receiving particularly consistently is how practical the application is. And I just want to say how pleased we are that you notice :) quite a bit of effort have gone in to do away with redundant texts, redundant images and well, redundant clicks.

Having said that though, one particular criticism we've been receiving also very consistently is the layout. It's so bland compared to the other travel sites!

This is a hard one to resolve... my natural defense is point to how google products are so much more intuitive to use than their competitors. BUT, working well doesn't mean you can't look cool, check out Apple products! So the conclusion is, I really don't have an excuse and I will blend functionality with style as soon as I am capable :)