Lastminute.com: Filtering choice

An understanding of customer needs allows them to navigate the complexity of choice.

The Site

Online travel site Lastminute.com offers a reasonably standard search on its Holiday page, with dropdown menus allowing choice by preferred departure and destination, price band, date and length of stay, and also likely temperature. However, the search results page includes the chosen criteria at the top of the page with an ‘X’ by the side of each to allow visitors to widen the choice if necessary.

Further focusing is provided at the bottom of the page by another set of filters – a holidaymaker can, for example, home in on a hotel that has a gym and offers half board. The results page refreshes automatically, with the new set of chosen criteria at the top. If the choice is now too narrow, one or more of these can be deleted.

The Takeaway

The debate as to whether too much choice is a good thing or the scourge of modern life continues. Lastminute.com offers a huge choice, but is also aware that its customers must be able to navigate through it with ease. Its two-stage filter makes what could be a complex system that much easier to handle. And the ease with which a search can be widened as well as narrowed shows a good understanding of customer needs. Any company wanting to give users an easy route through a complex database should take a look.

First published on 23 May, 2006