Air India, as part of its transformation plan “Vihaan.AI”, has unveiled a refreshed website.
A much better website
Air India has shifted from a .in domain to a .com domain in line with “the ambition of the airline to transform into a truly global airline based in India that attracts travellers from countries and cultures around the world”. Before we go into the details of the new website, you can check the refreshed website for yourself here.
Taking a look at Air India’s new website, first thought that comes to my mind is that how much better it is than the older version. The new website is so much better and user-friendly. Air India says that since nearly two-thirds of the airline’s website traffic comes from mobile devices, the website is designed to be mobile-friendly, accessible, and as intuitive on the smaller screens of mobiles as it is on a computer. The company has applied its ‘cloud-only’ principle to its website, with no on-premise components in the system’s architecture.
The airline says that its new website is a key component of serving this burgeoning customer base effectively and thereby increasing its direct-channel revenues. The technology re-platforming of the website will enable the rapid rollout of new customer-friendly features which was not possible with the two-decades old technologies used earlier. It is also expected to lead to user perceptible improvements in the performance of the website in areas ranging from time-to-load to perceived response time while making the website accessible to users with vision or hearing disabilities.
In our mission to digitally delight our customers at every touchpoint, our website plays a central starring role. It is an important medium using which we share our products with customers, help them get inspired by the destinations we serve, book their journeys with ease, and provide outstanding pre-flight and post-flight service. In our quest for the best technological solutions for building our website and the associated suite of digital marketing tools, we have deployed a set of comprehensive and well-integrated set of solutions from the world’s best technology companies that we believe will bring to life the beautiful designs of our in-house designers and provide a pleasing and easy-to-use digital channel for our valued customers. This website upgrade we have launched now is just the first in a series of design, content and feature improvements we have planned for the coming months that will culminate in what we believe will be a clear global leadership position for Air India’s digital direct channels.
said Dr. Satya Ramaswamy, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Air India.
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The significant experience redesign of the website was planned and executed by Air India’s in-house design and content teams based in Kochi and Gurugram in India and Silicon Valley in the USA. The experience management, digital marketing, analytics and personalization technology upgrades rolled out on the airline’s website are expected to contribute to a significant improvement in customer experience. This will also lead to an increase in the aggregate value and share of direct-channel revenues for the airline, while “contributing to the airline’s efforts to provide customers with efficient pre and post-flight support”.
Some subtle branding details that Air India has incorporated into its website are the “Jharokha” windows when the flight options are loading when searching for them. Another feature which will be very useful for Air India Flying Returns members is the “Loyalty” page wherein there are tools like Points Calculator for award flights and flight upgrades.
One interesting page is “About Us” where there is a whole timeline of Air India’s history since it started operations in 1932.
Also, the mobile app has been redesigned. However, I personally feel like the app needs an overhaul. While the website has taken a step forward, I feel like the mobile app has taken a step backwards, particularly for the not-so-smooth working of the app. This might be an issue on my smartphone only so I can’t tell for sure whether there is some problem with the app or not. What’s good is that Air India says that it is working on a “major upgrade” to its mobile app that is expected to go live by the end of this year.
Featured image is a screenshot of the mobile-friendly redesigned Air India website
What do you think of Air India’s refreshed website? Let me know in the comments section below.
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