Wheelchair Taxis

clusk007

Hi guys,

Recently (launched last Friday) began a website to make it easier to source a wheelchair taxi. I'm in a wheelchair myself and have always found it extremely difficult to source one last-minute. Hoping the website will go some way to making things easier.

I would love to get some feedback from you guys about the site. Please keep in mind that it's at a very early stage and in trial phase for the Wicklow area only for the next two weeks but feedback even now would be great. I do want to keep the site as simple and straight forward as possible. I have information on the way which will be put up on the site about how to properly restrain a wheelchair in a taxi for the drivers because they receive no formal training (video and PDF documents etc).
www.wheelchairtaxi.ie

regards,

Stephen

Mental Mickey

clusk007 wrote: »

Hi guys,

Recently (launched last Friday) began a website to make it easier to source a wheelchair taxi. I'm in a wheelchair myself and have always found it extremely difficult to source one last-minute. Hoping the website will go some way to making things easier.

I would love to get some feedback from you guys about the site. Please keep in mind that it's at a very early stage and in trial phase for the Wicklow area only for the next two weeks but feedback even now would be great. I do want to keep the site as simple and straight forward as possible. I have information on the way which will be put up on the site about how to properly restrain a wheelchair in a taxi for the drivers because they receive no formal training (video and PDF documents etc).
www.wheelchairtaxi.ie

regards,

Stephen

Good on ya. IMO there are plenty of wheelchair taxis out there....its just the ignorant/lazy drivers who don't bother to do the wheelchair work because they're too f***ing lazy or they prefer to get more money from a taxi full of able bodied people.

clusk007

Mental Mickey wrote: »

Good on ya. IMO there are plenty of wheelchair taxis out there....its just the ignorant/lazy drivers who don't bother to do the wheelchair work because they're too f***ing lazy or they prefer to get more money from a taxi full of able bodied people.

that's another problem but the website should solve that. It's up to the taxi driver to register so the onus is on them. this should mean that only the genuine drivers who want to carry wheelchair users will register. There are 1303 wheelchair taxis in Ireland, 2 in the whole of Tipperary! There are roughly 18,500 regular taxis so you do the maths :-)

cormee

Given the nature of the site, shouldn't it be accessible?

It's a classic grab & go site, your users want to be in and out with what they need, in as few steps as possible. I'd try reduce it to a one page site, or maybe two, including a separate contact page.

I'd lose all the blurb on the homepage - the site remit and functionality are self-explanatory, so that much content on the matter is unnecessary. In its place I'd put the Add a Listing box, and get rid of the Add a Listing page.

Ideally your 'How it Works' should be collapsible divs on the homepage in each relevant box, you could use accessible jquery for some nice ease-in and out effects. If you're determined to keep the How it Works page it should at least be linked from the Search box and Add a Listing box.

The numbered list should be
<ol>
<li>Select your county from the dropdown box on the homepage</li>
<li>Wait for town to load</li>
...etc...
</ol>

not <p>Select your county from the dropdown box on the homepage</p> etc.

Why is there a feedback form on the homepage and on the contact page? Quite confusing. Lose the one on the homepage.

The logo doesn't link to the homepage

For some reason you have h2's but no h1's - sort that out. You need a h1 on the homepage too.

The design looks a bit flat, a few gradients and dropshadows probably wouldn't go amiss.

I don't see a separate style sheet for mobile devices...it would be perfect as a web app, do a mobile interface up and submit it to (web) app directories.

cormee

...sorry, I didn't give any feedback on the results page.

1 - It needs a h1 that summarises the search - ie. Wheelchair Accessible Taxis in Aughrim County Wicklow
2 - Your thumbnail images aren't thumbnails, they're full-sized images made smaller using the html 'width' and 'height' attributes. They should be actual thumbnails.
3 - Your img alt is the taxi company name - that serves no purpose. Although it shows a picture of the taxi it could be argued it's a decorative image (because it's not functional and doesn't convey information), so change the alt to alt="", the same goes for your default_logo.png
4 - Lose the 'Move your mouse over the image for a larger version.' it's unnecessary,
5 - The More Details page is unnecessary. Move the content onto the search results page

clusk007

thanks Cormee for the valuable feedback. I'll definitely take these on board going forward. The website has a long way to go and as I said it's still very basic but you have to start somewhere! user accounts will be integrated and feedback on each driver but that's a few weeks away after all the feedback is gathered from Wicklow. Thanks again

cormee

No prob, it's a nice idea for a site and you'd have plenty of opportunities for monetisation if you got any sort of traffic.

If I was you I'd focus on the web app potential, most people will be looking for the taxis when they're out and about and they'll be using mobile devices.

If you're new to web apps don't be daunted by the idea, they're little more than a web page formatted for a mobile device.