The website is one of the primary channels of fostering the mission and vision of institutions. According to Nicholson and Li, a website should have significant influence and popularity based on the importance of its content to the intended audiences (212). The chief objectives of a website to its audience include participation, visitor satisfaction, or taking action (e.g. purchase) (Psaila and Wagner 31). This critical writing paper describes Airbnb website design, its advantages, its disadvantages, and ways to improve inherent shortcomings.
Mainly, many pictures depicting locations around the world characterize the largest section of the Airbnb website. Notably, some of these places include New York, Barcelona, Hawaii, Paris, San Francisco, London, and Budapest (Airbnb, Inc n.pag). At the top section, the website provides visitors with sign up, log in, and become a host option. At the bottom section, the website provides visitors with numerous links to various web pages and social media platforms such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube (Airbnb, Inc n.pag).
The design of the Airbnb website has numerous advantages. First, the website of the company is search engine friendly. A website with a friendly search engine helps visitors to trace relevant pages easily (Webguru India, 44). Second, the Airbnb website enhances user engagement through links to its web pages and social media platforms such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube (Airbnb, Inc n.pag). As Fuchs and Sandoval note, Airbnb achieves the website’s primary objective, which is to increase user engagement (211). Third, the site’s pictures together with suggestive messages such as “Falling in Love in Budapest,” provide visitors with the opportunity of choosing their destination based on their themes of travel.
Again, several disadvantages characterize the Airbnb website. First, the website uses many images. Webguru India notes that high usage of images slows down the loading of web pages (45). Second, the moving images lack pausing option. In this regard, these pictures are distracting visitors and affecting their peripheral vision. Third, essential information relating to the company such as “About,” “Policies,” “Press,” and “Careers,” is not immediately visible at a glance. According to Karwowski, about 90 percent of users do not scroll past the immediately visible information (1289). Since a visitor has to scroll down several, this design reduces visitor’s engagement.
The notable shortcomings of the Airbnb website can be addressed in several ways. First, some images should be removed. Then, relevant details (e.g. fare and hours of travel) should be put adjacent to the remaining pictures. Second, the moving images should have a pausing option so that website visitors can halt their movement to avoid distraction and reduce vision-related effects. Third, valuable content relating to the Airbnb such as “About,” “Policies,” “Press,” and “Careers,” should be part of the immediately visible information to increase visitor’s engagement with the website.
The design of the Airbnb website constitutes numerous pictures and information which are not immediately apparent. The website is search engine friendly and promotes user engagement through links to web pages and social media platforms. However, the presence of many pictures slows down the loading of the web pages. Again, the movement of some pictures distracts website visitors. The Airbnb website can be improved by reducing images, adding more details to the remaining pictures, and placing relevant information at the immediately visible area of the web pages.
Works Cited
Airbnb, Inc 2016, “Live there: Book Homes from Local Hosts in 191+ Countries and Experience a Place like You Live there”. Airbnb Online. Web.
Fuchs, Christian, and Marisol Sandoval. Critique, Social Media and the Information Society. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013. Print.
Karwowski, Waldemar. International Encyclopedia of Ergonomics and Human Factors, 2nd ed. 2006. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. Print.
Nicholson, Ann, and Xiaodong Li. AI 2009: Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 22nd Australasian Joint Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 2009, Proceedings. Berlin, Germany: Springer Science & Business Media, 2009. Print.
Psaila, Giuseppe, and Roland Wagner. E-Commerce and Web Technologies: 9th International Conference, EC-Web 2008 Turin, Italy, 2008, Proceedings. Berlin, Germany: Springer Science & Business Media, 2008. Print.
Webguru India. Design Your Imagination: Free Web Design E-Book. Kolkata, West Bengal: Brainware Consultancy Pvt. Ltd, 2010. Print.