I’m not a frequent flyer, but I sometime visited multiple Indonesia airlines websites just to get some information, especially for the ticket prices. I sometime try the navigation, or test the website features. By this, I want to learn how those websites are designed.

So, here are some screenshots of Indonesia airlines websites. I took the screenshots using the same conditions: Mozilla Firefox Browsers with the same screen dimension. From the screenshots you can also see what elements are being displayed above the fold — on my screen, of course. The screenshots are displayed not in a particular order.

Garuda Indonesia

When I visited Garuda Indonesia’s website, I got a inline popup window containing information that visitors should now. I think this is a good method to give the latest news. The information was displayed as image, not text. It was still readable, at least for my eyes. The notification image disappeared automatically in few seconds, assuming that I have a good reading speed. After it disappeared, I found it hard to read/find the information again. I checked the news section, and I couldn’t find ‘that important’ notice.

Batavia Air

When I hit the website, it asks me to choose two options: my origin country and language preference. And, it seems that these two options are mandatory. After choosing the language preference (which is the second option) I can enter the website.
I think the website is too busy. This is because of less spaces between objects.

Citilink Garuda Indonesia

That’s right. It’s pink. And, all information are displayed only in Bahasa Indonesia. There is a link to switch to English, but it does not work. There are promotional materials about the crew recruitment and information about “buy the service only”. Unfortunately, both materials go to recruitment information page. And, it seems that this website love using images.

AirAsia

Even the websites is available for visitors in many countries, when I visit this website for the first time, this site gives an information from my origin country: Indonesia. The default language is English but I can easily switch to Bahasa Indonesia. The origin country and language preferences are stored as cookies.

Lion Air

The landing page is similar to Batavia Air’s website: choose preferred country and language. I am not sure what I will have on the screen when I choose Singapore (or other countries except Indonesia) as my country because all displayed the same information. Or, does it use IP address detection to detect the origin countries?

Mandala Air

Right now, this airline is not operating for some administrative reasons. Too bad. The homepage displays booking system — that does not work right now. Not sure why they keep the booking form there.

Merpati Nusantara

It seems that this airline love to show its achievements or awards. I think the images there can be improved. Or, they want to use the animated image there as the news section because there is no “News” area there? Switching to English as the language preference does not make the image also available in English.

Sriwijaya Air

Nothing much I can tell about the website, the basic features especially for passengers are there. And, this website put its logo in different way — compared to other airline websites I mentioned above.

So, which one is my favorite? Or, which one is your favorite? I’m not the best in this web design practice, but these are few things I have in mind:

• Placing options at the landing page (the preferred county and language) is not necessary. Most website above must have its own statistics and they can be used to determine what to display on the front page. So, the challenge probably is about determining what so show which language should be used for the first time.
• Some information displayed in scrolling style. But, why an important information is being displayed as scrolling text? See how Batavia Air displays its Hotline Reservation contact number.

Overall, as long as the website works, it does not matter. But, it’s not only about having the website technical features work, right?