Website of the Week: Air Europa Duty Free
Founded in 1986, Air Europa is the airline division of the Globalia Corporation. As well as covering a large part of Spanish territory, Air Europa’s network takes in European, north African, transatlantic and Asian destinations. Its fleet comprises 32 next generation Boeing aircrafts and a modern Airbus A340.
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Being able to view four good-sized product photos on the screen is a plus |
Style
Sky blue border shades on a simple white background makes for pleasant enough browsing, though the choice and size of font makes it difficult to read.
Featuring a cropped photo of 100-metre sprinters poised and waiting for the starter pistol, the Products banner across the top (see photo below) is a brave choice and certainly adds vitality to the site: “Make the most of all Air Europa products,” the looping animated text says, “You will always WIN.”
Against that, several low resolution montages on the introduction page don’t help the overall early visual impression.
Content and usability
“At Air Europa we struggle daily to excel ourselves so we can offer you new services and the greatest range of world-class brands for your choice and satisfaction.”
So reads the introductory message. And, across eight categories – all easily found, along with available inflight bar items, via fixed right-hand links – there are a good number of high quality products on offer.
Twenty-two in the Cosmetics section; 20 under Jewellery, which includes watches; Spirits from Absolut Vodka to William Grant’s Family Reserve whisky; Tobacco has 10 choices of cigarettes, plus Davidoff cigars and cigarillos; there are 18 different types of Chocolate and sweets; Accessories include earphones, sunglasses and neckties; there’s an interesting selection of items for Children; and, most impressively, 34 brands of men’s and women’s Perfumes.
Photos are arranged side-by-side in two columns, so at any one time you can usually view four generous-sized images (see photo above). And keep scrolling down for more. It’s simple, but effective.
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Visually, the front page of the ‘Perfumes’ section is disappointing |
Indeed, there are no airs and graces at all about this site. It doesn’t try to dazzle the user with technological wizardry, merely provide a pictorial products listing.
But after sending the cursor on a hunt for links that turn out not to exist, consumers could well wonder “Is that it?” and may be left longing that the site had been more ambitious.
It’s helpful for travellers to be able to see what’s on offer inflight before they travel, but the usefulness would increase with prices or more detailed product descriptions.
There’s no pre-order, nor an online purchase facility, and the link to a PDF document containing the full catalogue was broken at the time of writing.
A further minus is the design of the perfume section, where the ugly blank space accommodating a drop-down brand menu (which contains a broken link to Hugo Boss) could be put to better use.
Finally, the English language version offers a bit of Spanglish, with “˜Productos’ amongst the roll-over links to other sections of the main site.
What we like:
Static right-hand links make navigation simple
Four products can be seen on the screen at a time
What we think needs improving/adding:
Prices
More product information
MORE WEBSITES OF THE WEEK
Website of the Week: Frankfurt Airport Duty Free & Travel Value – 22/11/06
Website of the Week: Cadbury Schweppes ITR – 15/11/06
