When I was in graduate school, I worked on a project based on the usability and ease of navigation of websites, so here are some of my opinions. (Please note that I will not write the actual essay for you, I will just put my ideas in point form).

Look and feel of the website;

-the front page loaded up quickly
-there seems to be bold colors which take up the whole screen almost, and the colors are almost a little too bright
-there are a lot of banners on top to click through, which gives the appearance of an easy to navigate website (reservations, travel, deals & offers)
- when you actually click on one of the tabs, it brings you to a page with minimal information. To make this more user friendly, the tab that is selected should be shown in a different color then the other tabs so that the consumer knows exactly where they are. For example, I clicked deals and offers. On the main frame of the page, the title deals and offers is there, but in small font. If I left my computer and came back, I would have never remembered that I was on the deals and offers page - if the tab that days deals on offers on top was highlighted, then I would reorient myself to the website quickly
- by clicking the logo on the top left corner, I was able to return back to the homepage quickly, which is a good features which makes for easier navigation (don't have to click the back button)
- I found the font size to be way too small. They try to cram too much information onto one page.
- One main feature of the usability of a website is that most of the information should be shown on one screen shot - i.e the person should not have to scroll down to continue reading. Their homepage fails at this criteria - I had to scroll down to see the full information.
- There are links at the bottom on the frontpage, which are in a horrible color font, and they are completely illegible.
Ease of navigation
-In theory, the website should be easy to navigate, since it has the top tabs, and when you mouse over the tabs, a drop down menu appears.
-there is also a search feature which also allows customers to search for what they are looking for. However, I typed in international travel restrictions and 745 pages came up. The website pulled up all mentions of the word restriction, which made my search useless.
- When booking a flight, I counted 4 clicks until you enter your name and credit info. It took 3 clicks until I knew how much my flight would cost.
- I tried to click "back" to update my flights, and the website would not let me. It brings me back to where I was before. This a major frustration.
- A major issue with the navigation of the website is as follows:
---- you choose your flight, and then you are first given options for the departing flight. You select which flight you want, and next to the flights is a price. I chose a flight from Montreal to Madrid (the exact trip I took this summer). I get a price of $920 for one option for the departing flight.
----It is very hard to see where you click to select the flight - there is a tiny button that says "select" but it is not user friendly at all. It is in blue and it does not stand out.
----Now I have to chose the times for my arrival flight, and now they give me an option to take a flight from Madrid to Montreal for $1011. How did that happen? I already took a flight for $920. Why are there differences in the flight prices. This also makes me wonder if the price they are quoting is for a one way ticket or 2 way? If you look closely, it says in GRAY ink, "round trip/person". I could hardly make out the words. So now I am wondering how much my flight will actually cost me? $920 or $1011??
-----So I select the flight for $1011, and my total now says $2,022 for 2 people. What happened to the $920 flight? At this point, I would abandon the website, and call customer service. This is a BAD thing. Every time a customer leaves the website to call customer service, it costs Continental money in long distance phone calls, people to answer the phones, office space, utilities... They want people to book online.

- A better designed website would show all the options for departure and arrival which are the same price grouped together (i.e not split up). This would save on a lot of confusion, and a lot of discrepancy issues on price.
- There are also too many clicks. All flight selection data should be on 1 page.

Impact & Strategy of site

The impact of the site in the eyes of consumers seems to be only ok. They use bold colors, but the font size of the text is too small, and it hard to read some pages. There are only a few pictures on the site - more pictures of sunny destinations might brighten up the site and make a better impact (i.e really entice people to book a trip)

Their strategy seems to be minimalist. They provide the information with little frills - the website is plain, and it is designed to provide information. I think that the layout of the site is much better then aa.com - when you go to aa.com, and you click on special offers, a page with 100 links pops up. This is not user friendly at all. At continental, things are organized by category, there is not too much information on a page, the customer is not bombarded, they provide the customer with what they need. The only thing lacking in their strategy is the difficulties related to booking a flight. (all the issues I mentioned above)

Strength:
- easy navigation
- not too much info on 1 page
- the tabs on top help consumers move from topic to topic
- easy return to home page
- page loads of quickly
- offers many services (flights, hotels, car rental)
- the website is offered in many different languages for international users to use, and users can book flights in their local currency). This is a big benefit since a website can attract people from all over the world, and if they are easily accommodated to, they might be more likely to book a flight (it is available in Spanish, French and Japanese)
Weaknesses:
- too many clicks to purchase a flight
- discrepancy of the pricing of the flight
- departure and arrival flights not on the same page
- "select button" hard to see
- certain elements are in a grey font that is hard to read
- links on bottom of page hard to see
- search function needs to have its algorithms updates

What do others think of continental.com? Well according to this website, http://aswas.typepad.com/hall_of_fame/2006/08/continentals_we.html, the website is the pits.

This person essentially rags on the usability of he website. "The site showed me the flights I wanted, flights I had previously planned out. I said I wanted to purchase those, and it started asking me for screen after screen of information. Each screen had one or two questions. Why this couldn't be on one screen, I have no idea. I answered all the questions, and kept getting the dead end.
I tried again. I started a fresh flight search. This time, the flights I had picked before were gone. Evidently, they've fallen off the planet. Don't exist. Can't sell them to me. I picked different flights. Answered all the questions. And still hit the dead end."

It is true that the number of clicks to book a flight is too high. It is not user friendly at all.

However, continental is praised on this website http://iblnews.com/story_en.php?id=8730 for offering the website in Spanish. Since the Spanish demographic in the website is growing quickly, by providing a Spanish version website, it would attract the business of these Spanish speaking Americans.