When you start to notice and critize usability issues in the websites you visit, you reach a new level, it’s time to talk about it  Today I was looking for a flight on several websites. I went on www.voyages-sncf.fr.

The story is easy, book a flight from Nice to Paris, leaving on August 29th, returning on September 1st. Well a lot can go wrong but that one went wrong pretty fast.

When I first look I was looking for the text boxes where I could enter my departure and destination. I had looked at other websites during the day so I had no time looking at the all. So here I go entering “Nice” in Depart and “Paris” in Arrivée. There is no completion in these fields, other websites quickly suggest as I type, that one did not. The calendar to pick the date worked - well I had to scroll the window a bit to get it display correctly (I was using IE7).

But there I noticed the checkboxes at the top. I did not see them in the beginning. I guess I was too focused on the text boxes and the color choices for the checkbox labels or the step 1 “Que souhaitez-vous reserver ?” did not really help.

By default, “Train” is selected (SNCF is France national train company…) so I’m just going to check “Vol” (flight).

And I did.

I should not have.

I had no other choice.

How could you!

They just cleared all my selections! How could it be, I mean train/plane, there is a starting point, a destination, and dates. It should not be too complicated to keep these choices between checkbox click. Sure the option for train and plane are a bit different.

Actually it’s even worse… why checkboxes? In fact it looks you can reserve multiple “products” at the same time, a train + a flight + a car.

Next time I’ll be more careful… hum… no… I’ll just pick another website!

Others (Expedia and Opodo below) do it differently (better?)