United Airlines this week will open to the public a functioning preview of its main website, united.com, which the carrier says will offer customers more information, greater flexibility and robust searching for flight booking.
Starting as early as Tuesday morning, users can go to beta.united.com and use the new site, which will be fully functional and can be used for booking flights as an alternative to united.com.
Among the changes, the website’s design is streamlined, with a more modern, less cluttered look and lots of white space for easier reading — more like a smartphone app. Indeed, the site was patterned after United’s smartphone app to be “touch-friendly” and is designed to work on any device, regardless of screen size, United spokeswoman Jennifer Dohm said. Airport kiosks, including those at O’Hare International Airport, will have a similar design and colors.
“It’s more than a redesign or slapping new paint on something to make it look prettier,” Dohm said. “We wanted to rethink what it means to book a ticket, from the ground up, and take a step back and ask, ‘What would someone want when they are trying to pick the exact right flight for them?'”
United.com accommodates some 2,000 users per minute and books about $1 million in revenue per hour, according to Chicago-based United. That shows how valuable the website is to United and its customers, Dohm said. “Making a better website is obviously better for business and better for folks’ travel experience,” she said.
For now, the new design is applied to only the home page and booking pages. Links to the frequent-flier account page or checked bag fees page, for example, take customers to the old site, which can be visually jarring and by comparison seems cluttered.
United is working to convert other pages to the new design, Dohm said.
Besides design, the biggest change might be how customers book flights. With the new site, United has gone to one-way booking and pricing, rather than showing round-trip itineraries. Separately choosing a departing flight and returning flight provides more flexibility and transparency, Dohm said.
Among the most helpful additions for price-sensitive bookers is a 15-day timeline at the top of every results page. It shows fares on either side of the selected departure and arrival date — in case your schedule is flexible enough to leave earlier or later for a lower fare.
For example, a recent search showed the cheapest one-way flight from Chicago to Newark, N.J., on Monday, May 25, is $262 with a connection in Cleveland, but leaving instead on Tuesday yields a lowest fare of $170, or $149 on Wednesday.
The biggest change for power users is the site’s filtering ability. After an initial search of flights for a particular destination and date, a filtering bar at the bottom of the page gives additional options.
For example, users can eliminate airports they don’t want to connect through, maybe avoiding northern U.S. connections in winter. Or users can avoid red-eye flights or eliminate “risky” connections of less than an hour. Or they can search by flights that have onboard Wi-Fi.
In the search results, a single click reveals the seating map, showing availability. It also shows the ability to upgrade a seat with frequent-flier miles.
On the new home page, blocky widgets offer quick access to information if you’re logged in, such as flight status, upcoming trips, frequent-flier balances and the ability to check in for a flight.
“Really, it’s a lot smarter,” Dohm said.
Settings on the home page allow users to set their own background, such as a new model 737-900ER flying over Seattle, a United Club lounge at O’Hare or palm trees in St. John.
United has not yet set a cutover date for when the new design will be permanent, but it’s likely to be this summer, Dohm said.
In February, United began testing the new design with some 4,000 users, including elite frequent-fliers, corporate travel agencies and employees. Some of their feedback has been incorporated into the new site, including using a darker gray font for letters to improve readability and including the type of aircraft in search results, Dohm said.
United continues to ask beta users for feedback on the new website.
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