New YHA Website Review
Last week the YHA launched the latest version of its website. It’s already generated some discussion on the UK Hostelling news group , but here’s my take on “what’s hot and what’s not” in the new offering.
First Impressions
The bright, new look of the site makes an instant impression. Out goes the old pale blue design, and in comes one that is largely black-on-white (or off-white pastel areas), with highlighted areas in orange.
The site makes good use of photography, with a big, wide photo used at the top of every page. Some of the pictures are quite stunning (the one on the Bright Lights page is my favourite so far), so it’s strange that the picture used for the front page of the site is a rather dull shot of Oxford YH.With all the interesting buildings and stunning locations at their disposal, they’ve chosen this slightly wonky, slightly blurry shot to front the site.
One thing Oxford YH has got going for it is a big green YHA logo on its front wall. This is just about the only appearance of “YHA green” on the whole site, if you didn’t know otherwise you’d assume that orange was YHA’s corporate colour.
Plus ça Change…
When you look beyond appearances, you discover that this isn’t really a new website after all. Much of the content has been lifted from the old site and transferred to the new one, errors and all.
What has changed is the addresses of the pages. Every page beyond the home page seems to have been moved and/or renamed. This is true to form from previous redesigns, but is still bad news (and quite unnecessary to boot). All the tourist information sites in the country that might be linking to particular hostels’ pages will now find those links broken, though it’ll probably take months before some of them actually do find them. Even the pages mentioned in the e-newsletter YHA issued three weeks ago have been moved or disappeared altogether.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Without getting too technical, a “301 Redirect” could, and should, be set up that forwards anybody looking for an old address on to its new location. If it’s too burdensome to do this for every page on the old site, it should at least be done for individual hostels’ pages.
Inspired
One genuinely new section is the “Inspire Me” pages accessible from the middle of the main menu. Grouped under headings like “Action Adventure” and “Family Fun”, the site suggests hostels that give that particular experience. Whilst one may query some of the choices (is Sherwood Forest YH really “not to be missed” alongside Boscastle and St Briavels?), it’s a really good idea, and one that could help steer customers to some of those great hostels that are outside the “honey pot” locations.
Hostel Listings
The heart of the site, of course, is the listings of hostels and their details. The full list of hostels has disappeared from the front page, which is probably the right decision but will be a nuisance when you want to quickly look up a particular hostel.
Instead you must go to one of the YHA regional pages – London, South East England, etc. – and choose your hostel from there. The regional pages are the worst on the site. You have an illegible map overlaid with YHA logos (in orange, of course!) indicating where each hostel is. Below this is a list of the hostels concerned, written in the tiniest of typefaces. Anybody visiting from abroad without a knowledge of British geography will struggle to use these pages effectively.
Once you find your hostel, you can go to its section of the site. Each hostel page is headed by a photograph (sometimes there’s a choice of them, selected by a thumbnail picture), down the right hand side there’s the booking system (curiously not pre-set up to book that particular hostel, you have to find it again in the drop-down list). In the middle there’s text information about the hostel, once again in the tiny typeface seemingly reserved for the site’s most useful content.
Each hostel has five pages: General, Facilities, Travel Info, Local Info and Activities. The information on these pages is clearly maintained manually, so the “nearest hostels” listed on the Travel Info pages haven’t always kept up with the latest openings or closures. They also don’t link to the hostel in question. YHA apparently haven’t noticed the introduction of Explorer maps, so the only OS map numbers shown are the pink Landranger ones.
The maps shown on the two “Info” pages, whilst not quite of the same lamentable quality as the regional pages, are pretty poor. The user may zoom out to 1:358,000 scale or in to 1:14,480. To cover this range, the actual maps used are the 1:50,000 Landranger maps and 1:100,000 & 1:200,000 road maps. If scaling to a particular size makes these maps hard to read, tough! Critically, there’s no street map for when you zoom in close. If you’re staying in a town hostel, these maps are worthless. When such good, free, alternatives exist from both Google and Microsoft let’s hope YHA aren’t paying too much for this turkey.
Book him, Danno!
I wasn’t able to test the booking system beyond the first few stages, since I’m not looking to book anywhere right now. It currently only works for some of the hostels, but it’s being rolled out to the rest of them this year. From the Group point of view it’s rather limited, as you’re only allowed to book up to nine places using this system. If there’s more of you, you’re supposed to use a separate groups’ booking web page, which seems more geared up for educational groups than groups of members (for example, it doesn’t seem to like you going entirely self-catering on the groups page, even if it’s allowed on the main one).
What isn’t immediately obvious is that clicking on the orange “Book Now” box under the photo on most hostel pages takes you to a separate booking site with some richer features than the main site. Why it’s split in two like this I couldn’t tell you.
Make me an Offer
At the top of each page is a box marked “Special Offers”. Hover your mouse over it and you’ll see all YHA’s current offers. Or at least you’d think so, but you don’t. According to the special offers box, there are just four offers running right now: Blue Man Group (Oxford Street), Easter Eggstravaganza (Arnside), Groups Winter Offer (Sheringham) and York for a Tenner (guess where!). But if you go to the South East region page (for example), you’ll see a link to another “Offers” page which tells you there’s a special deal for family breaks at Canterbury YH.
Furthermore, if you go to one of those hostel’s pages, there’s no clue that they’re currently running a promotion. Surely the point of running a special offer is to attract customers? It’s not going to work if they have to go on a treasure hunt to find them. There should really be a system that will automatically place information about an offer on the national list, the regional one and the hostel’s own page. That way, people will find them however they come into the site.
Groups? We don’t need no Steenking Groups…
At the Coalport meeting, groups were promised a better web presence in the new site. For this reason, if for no other, the appearance of the new design has been eagerly anticipated. Well, that day has come and the affiliated groups’ content on the new site is exactly nothing. Not a single mention that affiliated groups even exist.
I do not want to believe that we have been lied to. Actually, I really don’t believe that. I’d like to think that the fantastic new groups pages are in the pipeline, but not ready for the public eye yet. However, in the mean time, there needs to be at least a static page somewhere telling people about groups (heck, just put a link in to yhagroup.org.uk!) and some communication from Matlock to explain the delay.
Conclusion
I’m going to finish here because I’m getting tired and I’m getting depressed. The eagerly-anticipated new design for the YHA site turns out to be largely a retread of the old one. None of the things which they might have done – hostel managers’ blogs, somewhere for visitors to post pictures and reviews of hostel visits, selling maps and guidebooks from the site, better (or any!) coverage of groups – are present. Even things which they have done, like the special offers, have not always been done well.
The real disappointment stems from a failure to engage with the membership about the whole process. They could have put a notice on the site six months ago saying “we’re re-designing this site, what are your ideas?”. I’m sure that would have resulted in a better outcome for all concerned.
I expect to make further forays into the new website in coming weeks to examine other aspects of emergent YHA culture and policy, but for the time being it’s over to you. Please use the comments here to say what you think…
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A pretty comprehensive assessment of the new site there, Chris, and I couldn’t agree more with your comment about 301 redirects.
I don’t want to digress too much into the tech side either, but frankly, engaging an “award winning digital agency” that doesn’t understand the importance of implementing these is lunacy.
The `group booking` function has errors. When looking up Coniston Holly How there were various group deals presented including B&B, half board and full board for an important bank holiday period. On direct emailing the hostel, only Full-Board was available. This type of error does not give confidence in the rest of the interactive features on the site.
Why has Epping Forest been transferred to the South East region on the new website (but not in the new printed Accomodation Guide)?
Gary: As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason why a YHA Group should be forced to stay full board if it doesn’t want to. If they’re advertising B&B as a possibility on the website surely they’re on thin ice legally by not offering it in practice? It’s up to you how bolshie you want to be, but I’d pursue this if you want to stay at Holly How. I know our group would never stay full-board, heck we’re not that happy about compulsory B&B…
John: Well spotted! Looking more closely, it appears that they’ve changed the hostel regions in the new handbook, for example merging “Lakeland” with “North West Cities”, but they’ve not kept step on the website. Bad news for people trying to use both of them together!
A pretty comprehensive review and I couldn’t agree more. A new site in spite of the membership!
I don’t trust the online booking and have only had one success with it so telephone the hostels instead.
[...] [Added - There’s a full review of the site on the YHA Groups’ website] [...]
Two points on online booking. I used it several times now for different hostels for differing numbers of people and had no problems either on the website or with the hostel on arrival.
About group size I agree that offering bed only should be put forward as an option but it is the hostel managers decision as to what options they put on the web. That’s why with Coniston I’d have booked half board via the website regardless of what was said by email. They can either refuse your booking or accept what you want. If they weren’t prepared to offer it then that option should be removed from the website.
I have booked 16 people in on a bed only basis by checking the availability for 16 on the group booking page and then making the booking as two lots of 8 on the individual page. Clumsy but it worked.