My name is Hrush. I am one of Cleartrip's founders and I'd like to clarify how things actually work.
Firstly, the "X seats left" feature is not an 'algorithm' at all. It is a simple count of the number of 'seats remaining' at a specific price point for a specific flight departure.
In the example illustrated in the post, there is only a single seat left at a price point of Rs. 34,255. This does not mean that there is only one seat left on the flight, it means there is only one seat left at that specific price.
When the search was repeated for 2 travellers, the price per person increased to 35,746, and then increased to Rs. 37,008 per person when the search was done for 4 travellers.
Airline pricing is based on 'fare classes' or 'buckets'. Buckets typically work like this:
1. Each bucket is allocated a fixed number of seats.
2. Each bucket is associated with exactly one price point
3. When there are no more seats available in a bucket, seats from the next highest bucket are displayed and so on
At Cleartrip, we work hard to give our customers the best prices. We never have and never will engage in the "fake scarcity tactics" that this post accuses us of.
I'd also like to point out again that we have a tool tip on the button that clearly reads that there are 'X seats left at this price'.
In my opinion, you're skating on thin ice with this explanation. I have no doubt that this is exactly how the feature works. However, you're posting in a community full of entrepreneurs and marketers. We KNOW that presenting scarcity (real or not) is a great way of influencing the buy decision.
You will never convince anyone here that the wording of the badge wasn't deliberately designed to promote the feeling of scarcity.
What I'm suggesting, however, is that this isn't really a bad thing. It's a little tough to call you guys out on the practice of optimizing the site for sales... we'd all be very hypocritical if we did that (since the next popular article on HN is just as likely to be a treatise on the fine art of A/B testing the wording on a "try it now" button).
I think what everyone is asking for is just that you say "yes, our tests showed this wording worked very well to increase purchases. However, perhaps we went a little too far. We'll reword the button."
What you SHOULDN'T expect is for any of your peers on this site to honestly believe the connotation of your explanation, which seems to be "the badge OBVIOUSLY represents the number of seats left at this price, instead of seats left on the flight. But since a few people have this weird interpretation, we'll change it just for you."
But you know what... I suspect it's all moot. I'm sure the way it's worded now ultimately generates the highest sense of urgency in the customer, but "1 left at this low price" probably generates a similar urgency.
To be perfectly honest, we didn't test for differently worded labels at all. So, we'd be outright lying if we said what you're asking us to.
We agree that we need to work on improving the design of the feature and we will be doing just that. “X seats left at this price” is a better label, but may be too long to fit for the way it is currently designed, so we will need to think about how we can best convey the information better.
I was thinking about that. What about an asterisk? Then you could make the tooltip the asterisk expansion. On the bottom of the page, you could also give the expanded version.
This might be the best of both worlds, because you can keep the wording but you also let people know there's more information about what it means.
EDIT: Another idea...
So, you could make the price plus the "x left" be a single graphical unit, thus strongly tying the "x left" to the price, rather than to the seat selection. Then, right below that in a light font, you could say something like "12 left from $y to $z".
The screenshots in the article support your statement. However, don't you think this is practice grossly misleading? It's common, especially on low-cost flights, to gradually ramp up the seat price as the tickets are sold. Sometimes (and this seems to be such an example), this means no single seat costs the same as the next one sold - but that doesn't mean there are huge price differences between buying seat n and n+1.
Don't you agree that the user's perception of this UI is that fake scarcity tactics are being employed?
Udo -- the practice of ramping prices up and down is called Yield Management and is a commonplace strategy for suppliers of perishable inventory such as airlines and hotels.
We wanted to our users to be able see how long a price point is going to remain available. Our hope is that most users will be able to make better decisions about whether to book immediately or to wait a little longer.
With respect to whether the price differences are huge or not, the prices are going to be higher. Travel is an extremely price-sensitive category and India is an extremely price-sensitive market. So, in our opinion, this feature lets users make better decisions.
Since the button seems to be causing some confusion, we'll see what we can do to best improve it.
I feel that maybe I didn't express myself clearly, apologies. The main point from a user experience design perspective here isn't that Yield Management is happening (which is perfectly OK, the article just didn't recognize it). Instead it's this:
> We wanted to our users to be able see how long a price point is going to remain available.
On a flight where every single seat represents a discrete price point, this information becomes dubious at best. What's more, the UI on your website makes the semantics of this very murky, culminating in unnecessary misunderstandings like this article.
To make it perfectly clear: I'm not suggesting there is anything wrong with your business practices. Instead, the fault lies with your user interface for not making the distinction clear between the number of seats available on the flight in general and the number of seats left at the current price point (which is almost ALWAYS equal to the number of seats the user has requested).
Yep. We agree that we need to work on improving the design of the feature and we will be doing just that. “X seats left at this price” is a better label, but may be too long to fit for the way it is currently designed, so we will need to think about how we can best convey the information better.
Sounds like a minor usability problem has cost you a potential customer. The question is how many other customers have had the same problem but not bothered to write blog posts.
Relying on tooltips is probably a bad idea. Maybe change the button text to 'X seats at this price'. Don't make me think. :-)
On the bright side, be thankful for the good user feedback. I wish everyone who stopped using my product wrote a blog post.
My name is Hrush. I am one of Cleartrip's founders and I'd like to clarify how things actually work.
Firstly, the "X seats left" feature is not an 'algorithm' at all. It is a simple count of the number of 'seats remaining' at a specific price point for a specific flight departure.
In the example illustrated in the post, there is only a single seat left at a price point of Rs. 34,255. This does not mean that there is only one seat left on the flight, it means there is only one seat left at that specific price.
When the search was repeated for 2 travellers, the price per person increased to 35,746, and then increased to Rs. 37,008 per person when the search was done for 4 travellers.
Airline pricing is based on 'fare classes' or 'buckets'. Buckets typically work like this:
1. Each bucket is allocated a fixed number of seats.
2. Each bucket is associated with exactly one price point
3. When there are no more seats available in a bucket, seats from the next highest bucket are displayed and so on
At Cleartrip, we work hard to give our customers the best prices. We never have and never will engage in the "fake scarcity tactics" that this post accuses us of.
I'd also like to point out again that we have a tool tip on the button that clearly reads that there are 'X seats left at this price'.