This is the second part of my World Airport Website Report. The topic of this article is To & From Airport.

SFO – San Francisco Airport

Driving Direction

The driving directions is not directly located in the SFO airport website homepage. The only link to the page is the SFO Terminal Map under Airport Information section. It confuses with Airport Guide link on the top navigation – as I stated before, the vertical navigation structure is often ignored by users. Do you also agree?

Location

OK. For the driving direction page, what I expect is a location map. For SFO page, it is not that good, but it provide a description of the location:

San Francisco International Airport is located approximately 13 miles south of San Francisco, near the junction of Highways 101 and 380.

That is also good.

Route

The driving direction under From 380, From the North, From the South are concise and clear. I especially love the direction map:

Above: The scale and detail level is just enough to illustrate the direction.

Train

Besides driving directions, train is also the must-have information for an airport. The AirTrain information provided by SFO is very nice and detailed. The only problem is in the daul navigation system. I mean when I navigate to AirTrain page from the left navigation bar, the vertical navigation bar on the top also appeared. This kind of arrange is confusing. I need to avoid it in my design for PVG.CN

The map, I have to say, is too small and does not illustrate the stations clearly. If it can be 50% larger, and provide more information about for the stations, it will be perfect.

The FAQ section is very good. It provide answers to questions like “Can I take my bicycle on AirTrain?” – very well done.

Phone numbers

The phone numbers of SFO page must be useful. For Shanghai Pudong Airport, maybe I need to provide a phone number of my volunteers at schools instead of the airport phones – they don’t speak English. Mostover, the phone numbers published are either busy all the time or no answer.

Taxi

There is a ground transportation section on the top navigation bar. Taxi, vans, buses and other ground transportation are listed at the left navigation bar. It is a pitty that there is no route for all the services.

Overall rating

4.5 out of 5. The 0.5 point is for the navigation structure.

SIN – Singapore Changi Airport

Navigation

Transport section on Changi Airport is not easy to found. It is listed under the Arrival part which is not reasonable. To & From Airport is still a very good title for this kind of information.

Ground transportation

The information provided by Changi Airport is concise and to the point. They are broken into the following sections:

Overview

Travel Fare/Destination (From Airport to City)

Frequency/Contact Information

I believe they are the most interested information for any type of the transportation. The pictures of the taxi/bus should be very useful and the map of the route should also be provided. I didn’t this this on their website.

Over Rate

4 out of 5.

NRT – Tokyo Narita Airport

Here is what NRT call the same “To & From Airport” information:

Ground Transportation – getting to and from Narita Airport

Under this title, taxi, bus, rail options are given.

Location of Airport

For the Location of Airport page, it is among the best to provide visitor some sense about where the airport is. Most of the airport, including SIN and HKG, didn’t provide the information.

If it can be improved, they should mark where the island is at the whole Japan country. I believe many people, including me, don’t know exactly where Tokyo is within Japan. Some may even don’t know about where Japan is exactly located in Asia.

Train

Train information at NRT is compresensive. But the problem is, it is not concise and I didn’t get the point after first read about the page – what do you feel?

The problem maybe, there is no short overview like that found in SIN airport website. Moreover, there are too many lines – in thick blue and red lines and didn’t give people an idea about which line they should take.

Buses

Like train page, the buses page is the traditional Japanese style – intensive use of tables, names but may not be use friendly if people don’t know about the name of the cities.

To & From Haneda Airport

This section is unique in NRT airport since Tokyo has two airport. I didn’t know that before I read the page.

There should be a brief introduction explaining the facts of two airport, their relationship and why people need to go between the two airport.

Connecting between Terminals

Well. As tradition, this section should be placed into the Terminal map section. Besides the good map, they need to provide more information (just overview) about the difference and the relationship between the two terminals. Otherwise, I don’t see any reason I need to transit from one terminal to another.

DFW – Dallas Airport

Navigation

The DFW’s web designer put the airport transportation into the wrong location – at least from my perspective – they put it under Airport Guide, along with Terminal and Parking information. See screen shot below:

Look at the first level navigation bar:

Home

Flight Information

Airport Guides

Shops & Restaurants

Travel Planner

About DFW

MediaSite

Business Opportunities

Ambassador Volunteers

Capital Development

Cargo

I believe it is not focus on the most frequently visited section. How many people coming to DFW are interested in the Business Opportunities and Volunteers information? Why it is put at more obvious place than Flight Information and Transportation?

I don’t have much interest in this airport now.

Chicago O’Hare International Airport

Overview

In the previous report, I forgot to put the U.S’ Busiest Airport – O’Hare Airport.

Location

The location of O’Hare page is not as useful as that on SFO’s page. The SFO page provided useful driving direction from nearby express ways to the airport, although it does not provide a directly driving direction for New York to SFO. Chicago’s airport try to use MapQuest to give direction to the airport from any location of U.S, it is good but the airport website should provide some handy information without using the search box.

Ground Transportation

The taxi information page at Chicago airport is very well designed. The good thing is, along with the detailed explaination, it also provide terminal map and some taxicabs contact information. That is useful.

The other good thing is the homepage of the Ground Transporation page. It provide pictures so people can click on the big buttons to visit ATS, taxi, shuttle and rental car pages. For an airport, the big buttons in the content area are more visiable than the vetical navigation bars.

Summary

In this report, I reviewed the To & From Airport section for some airport. In the next report, It will cover the terminal map section.