Cheapflightsfares is a legitimate US travel agency based in Cleveland in the State of Ohio in USA. It provides flight booking, hotels reservations and car rental services to the people in USA. It is focussed on the US market. Its major line of business is that of flights. So, a comprehensive review has been taken on what all this OTA offers in its flight section. Let us discuss in detail point by point.

1. Search and Booking Engine

This is like any other search and booking engine which you would find on airlines or flight reservations site.

However, the company could have tried introducing a voice based search engine which fills the engine form field on voice commands and shown the results. That would have made it very interesting for the visitors.

• Home Page

Home page shows how people review this company based on their interactions with the company. The review collection sites which it mentions are highly reputed (such as, Trustpilot, sitejabber, reviews.io, Google and Facebook) and the rankings of the company of these sites are very positive. Further, it gives above-the-fold space of home page to its environmental commitment. It provides deals for domestic flights, international flights, lists banners of some prominent American airlines and links back to some of its special pages.

Our view of the home page is that it has large banners, and only 10 routes deals to show. The hotels and car rental section is there just for the sake of it. It is not making any compelling impact on the visitor to invite any kind of action (clicks). We do not see any relevance of putting the customer reviews of Trustpilot again below when already the details are given below the search engine. This space could have been use for other spaces.

• Listing page

Searching for cheap flights for any one combination of route loads the page fairly quickly.

The listing has tabs of NEARBY Airport, Alternate Dates and Shortest flights and shows the best ticket prices alongside. This gives more choices of searching to the visitors.

A good feature noticed here is that for the same airline and fare combination, flights during different times are shown. This comes up in a pop-up.

This gives more options of selecting from different times for same fare. This also frees up space below for listing more flights of different fare or from another airline. This is a commendable innovation.

Environment commitment follows through from home page to the listing page as there is one banner which comes up in space between the listing of flights.

And, also below the filters on left side on the desktop view.

The extreme right side of the container of a flight shows the cabin class of travel, price, the EMI option price, and whether the carry-on or check-in baggage is allowed free or not. Good use is made of the icons in this respect.

On selection of any flight, a slider opens from right to left which basically shows itinerary details, details of baggage information and also prods the visitor to buy refundable ticket service by paying some extra amount per passenger. Basically, it is a summary of the flight.

• Purchase Flow:

On moving further, the next step is actually the first page of completing the flight reservations. It shows the itinerary and price details and asks you to enter the email and phone number.

The right side bar shows summary of what the price includes. On the top there is again a Trustpilot and sitejabber review widget which is just to build up the confidence of visitors.

The next page of purchase flow asks you to provide the name, DoB and gender information.

It also asks you to buy a Travel Protection Plan which an offering from third-party Tripmate. This is an organization which provide travel insurance. So, it is good to see Cheapflightsfares offer this service for the visitors.

Very interestingly, as one moves on to the next page, there is a pop-up appearing which seeks seat selection from you for your journey. This pop-up shows a seat map of the airline and asks you to either skip or select your seats.

Presence of this feature shows that the website has good level of product depth for the visitors. Seats can be selected for all legs of journey and for all passengers booked on the ticket. So, this quite a nice feature of the site.

After moving ahead from this pop-up, the next page appears. A quick look on the page shows that it is offering various add-on services to the visitors. These include Seats (if not selected previously), baggage, making booking refundable, auto check-in and flight alerts and the All-in-one pack (which bring 4 paid services in one plan at discounted price).

All of these add-on features are valuable for the passengers. Passengers may opt to choose or not to choose any of these.

Just as one begins to move to next step, without selecting any service, a pop-up appears alerting the passenger that he/she has not bought any check-in baggage. So, this makes the passenger re-think whether he would be carrying a check-in bag or not.

After making the choice clear, you move to the final payment page. This page lists all the payment options notably from Debit or Credit Card, or using the monthly payment service of Uplift. The company has Uplift as one of its partners. Besides payment option, the visitor finally reviews the itinerary and the inclusive services which he has bought, and proceeds to make the purchase.

Aha! We noticed one little slider from Hotjar appearing on this page, as we spent some time on this page without moving on with the purchase. It asks us to enter what is stopping us from payment here!!

This is a good way of asking the customer their feedback.

And, finally the booking is done.

The process of purchase is a little long but there are a number of services which the company would want to show to visitors. Even then, the company can reduce steps to three from four. Seats and Baggage re-push is a nice innovation.

Pages of Website

The website has business pages of following types-

1. City pages- These are the pages of US cities and International cities
2. Airlines pages- These cover all major US and international carriers, and have pages of these airlines
3. Routes pages- The website also lists some pages of routes. There is a gap here since there can be thousands of pages of routes (divided into domestic and international routes). Routes pages are not prominent one. So, there is a major gap here, both in terms of the number of routes and the importance of routes whose pages are created.
4. Special Themed Pages- Certain special pages, such as those of the Business Class Flights, First Class Flights, Under 99 Flights, Under $199 Flights and many pages on special occasion deals and special age group deals. This helps it to cover many keywords for search engine presence.

Partnerships

Cheapflightsfares has tied up with a number of partners to enrich its product portfolio. These are:

1. Kayak- Meta-search fare comparison site
2. Cheap Flights- Meta-search fare comparison site
3. Momondo- Meta-search fare comparison site
4. Ladybug- Meta-search fare comparison site
5. Plant a Tree- environment based organization
6. Uplift- for instalment based payments
7. Tripmate- for travel insurance

Summary

Cheapflightsfares is a reputable company which has prominent presence on major meta-search engines and is a fast growing company. Its partnerships running for many years with its partners are testimony of its trustworthiness as a business entity. The same is also echoed in the reviews provided by customers on various credible online platforms. The company has a good future since a good foundation has already been laid for it to take a major leap forward in future.