Multiple marketing offers have been nicely integrated with dynamic booking forms through an interactive carousel.
I like the concept of integrating special promotions into the booking form. But the switching behavior of the form on the left, to correspond with the changing accordion on the right creates some issues if you accidentally move your cursor over the the center. This behavior allows you to lose your place if you started entering data and your cursor position changed the visible form. The form you were filling out is essentially hidden and a new form is displayed. This seems like it creates a disorienting situation, and the problem is only created because the accordion changes on hover. That could easily be corrected, by at least only allowing panel changes on click.
I agree that changing on mouseover is bad (fortunately it remembers your changes to the form) but the overall idea is a good one -- making it obvious how to act on a promotion. Unfortunately, it's really only on mouseover that you're likely to discover this feature -- I don't see users clicking those headlines out of curiousity.
They've rather confusingly extended the idea to the category homepages (Coaches, Trains, etc.) where changing the promotion changes the booking form outline, but nothing else.
I recently wrote about the redesign of their sister site, National Express East Coast, giving it a glowing review:
http://blog.isotoma.com/2009/02/trainline_vs_nationalexpresseastcoast.html
I wonder whether it is by the same agency.
I think it was Flow Interactive
You're right -- thanks Jason. http://www.flowinteractive.com/case-nxec
The agency that designed the main National Express site mentioned here is we are:london, I think they used to be called CADinteractive.
Agree with aforementioned: the change in the behaviour of the forms on the left is a basic usability flaw and should *never be featured like that. Instead, the form could remain the same, with the default being the one with more options, and as the user hovers over (also a point of discussion) the parts of the form that don't apply were greyed out. This way it is possible to keep consistency, and things don't "fly out" of sight.
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