09 Sep 2011

By Zlatan

YQR.CA: Building A Website With Community Input

It’s always a great day when you launch a new website for a client. It’s an even better day when you launch a website that provides an essential service to your community.

We have worked with the Regina Airport Authority (RAA) since 2007 when they first hired us to design a website that would support their rebranding initiative.  Since then, their website has gone through several stages: “amazing”, “great”, “good”, “okay”, “passing” and “we need a new site”.  This is the usual cycle with every website and frankly, four years is quite a long time for the lifecycle of any website.

We started building a new site in March 2011. Having already worked with the RAA, we had a good understanding of the client’s operations.  We also realized, however, that we needed outside input into what would make yqr.ca a great, user-friendly website. So we turned to Twitter, shared the preliminary wireframe design, and asked the Regina community what they would want on the website.  The Regina (#yqr) community provided us with great feedback and gave us additional ideas that made their way into the final design of the site.

The completed website has the following features:

Arrivals and Departures

In analyzing the website statistics, we were able to determine that most people access the website to get “arrival and departure” information.  We therefore placed Arrivals and Departures right on the home page.  Another thing we noticed is that many of the site’s customers would load the arrivals and departures screen on their monitor and expect it to auto refresh itself just like the terminals at the airport. Therefore we built an auto refresh feature that refreshes the screen every three minutes.

Mobile Friendly
We also talked to customers about accessing yqr.ca from mobile devices.  Most people access it when they are expecting their flight and need the information quickly.  So, we designed a system that recognized the mobile device and switches the website to a mobile version of the website. We further simplified the mobile version of the website so that it only shows arrivals, departures and airlines information all in one screen.

Error Checking
As many of you already know, flight information can change quickly. It is remarkable to know that flight information gets updated every five minutes. This information is provided by a flight information provider and written directly to a file in the yqr.ca website. The file looks something like this

<SCHEDDATE YEAR="2011" MONTH="09" DAY="06" />
   <MODE TYPE="A" />
   <DATE YEAR="2011" MONTH="09" DAY="06" />
   <TIME HOUR="12" MIN="33" />
   <SCHEDTIME HOUR="12" MIN="33" />
   <GATE></GATE>
   <PODIUM></PODIUM>
   <BRIDGE></BRIDGE>
   <TERMINAL></TERMINAL>
   <POSITION></POSITION>
   <CAROUSEL></CAROUSEL>
   <STATUS>Early</STATUS>
   <COMMENT></COMMENT>
   <OPERATE></OPERATE>
   <SECTOR>None</SECTOR>
   <CITIES>Minneapolis</CITIES>
   <CITYCODES>
    <CITYCODE IATA="MSP" CITYTEMP="21" CITYWTR="5" CITYWTRTEXT="WeatherPartlyCloudy" CITYNIGHT="0">Minneapolis</CITYCODE>
   </CITYCODES>
   <AIRCRAFT></AIRCRAFT>
  </FLIGHT>
  <FLIGHT DISPLAY="WS490">
   <CARRIER>
    <NAME>Westjet</NAME>
    <ABBREV>WS</ABBREV>
    <URL></URL>
    <SMALLLOGO>wjas_0067e.jpg</SMALLLOGO>
    <LARGELOGO>wjas_0068e.jpg</LARGELOGO>
    <CSMLOGO></CSMLOGO>
    <CSSLOGO></CSSLOGO>
   </CARRIER>
   <NUMBER>490</NUMBER>
  <CODESHARES>
  </CODESHARES>
 
Our job is to read that information and display it to the website visitors in a readable format. Another thing we do is check to see if the information is current.  For example, if we notice that the information received is older than 15 minutes, we assume that the data provider is having technical difficulties and advise customers to contact their airline for the updated flight information.

Content Management
This website is developed on a CMS (content management system) platform which gives the client full management capability to run online polls and advertising, as well as to manage content, menus and sub menus. The client can also upload files, videos and any other media they need when they need it.
 
Future Plans
Once we analyze the traffic information on the new website we will continue to improve it. The features we are already planning to implement include automatic flight tracking and social media integration.

And as always, we’d love to hear your feedback!