Great web site

I don’t know what the CMS is, but the Amtrak web site has one of the best user interfaces I’ve seen: http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/HomePage.

I had to go there to change the date of the first leg of a train reservation on a ticket I bought for my son. It was about 30 minutes before the train left and I had never changed an Amtrak reservation before. I was dreading the job and figured I’d end up with a hellish phone call. It took me about two minutes, and at every step, I knew exactly what to do and where I was in the process. As a bonus, the e-ticket I printed out and mailed to my son months ago still worked.

I spend a lot of time complaining about poorly designed web sites, so I thought I’d give one a compliment for a change.

It’s kind of pleasing to the eye and in terms of functionality your story shows that it is fine. There is room for improvement though, the url’s aren’t exactly pretty and i’m no validation freak but 317 Errors, 337 warning(s)for homepage html is a bit much. Guessing from the url’s one would think that there is some kind of java cms at work

not to nit-pick, but in smaller screen resolutions, the little "need help" guy in the bottom right covers up links in the footer. but i like the tab navigation, and the hover menus.

I agree on both counts, but just so it doesn’t get lost, I was making a point about the design of the functional user interface, not the page design or how it looks and validates. There are many web sites where the designers appear to think that the visual design *is* the user interface.

Bob,

Overall I have to agree with you. This is one of the better reservation sites I have seen.