Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport

Capturing the Essence of Air Travel

In 1952, when terminal one opened, a mere 296,056 passengers traveled the corridors of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport. As of 2011 however, a whopping 40,591,948 passengers were recorded. With four terminals and over 400,000 takeoffs and landings since 2007, Sky Harbor Airport has certainly surpassed expectations. This airport has become a sense of pride for the Phoenix metropolitan area. With access to numerous Arizona hot spots, downtown Phoenix and Arizona State University to mention a few, the location of this air-travel behemoth is second to none. With such a public gem as this, it is always important to supply information to the millions of passengers who enable Sky Harbor to function day-to-day. To ensure customer satisfaction and passenger approval, the administration of Sky Harbor has worked hard to supply a superb website to the general public. Sky Harbor’s website adequately conveys information through the use of relevant content and superior functionality, despite its lack of visually appealing components.

Sky Harbor’s comprehensive website provides a plethora of relevant content to the user. Every piece of information that is relayed to the reader is completely focused and provides direction to certain topics at the user’s discretion. In addition to the necessary general information, the site is home to hundreds of admissible facts and statistics that directly apply to future air travel passengers and Sky Harbor customers. These facts and statistics are all neatly hidden behind helpful links that lead the user to where they choose to go, even if that may be the site of another air travel related organization. This plethora of content would be unusable however if the website was lacking in functionality, but this simply is not the case.

Sky Harbor International Airport has gone above and beyond with its functionality. Functionality and easy use are two factors that the creators of this website truly excelled at. With the multiple and well-organized category tabs, finding the information that you need should never be an issue. While the Sky Harbor website has its flaws, it truly shines in this aspect. The creators have made a detailed and user-friendly web page with a wide variety of relevant and easily accessible information. On the slight chance that you do have an issue finding what you’re looking for, you’re provided with a convenient search function at the top of the page. It not only searches the website for information but actually uses Google as a reference as well. So with accurate and detailed information, a well-organized and convenient system of categories guides the user to whatever they seek to find.

Despite all of the Sky Harbor websites positives, the one feature that it lacks, is visual appeal. When you first visit the website, one of the first things that you notice is the lack of components that stick out to the user. The dull background colors are easily ignored. One example of this is demonstrated at the bottom of the page where a small section of links resides. The color of the link’s font is actually just a few shades of brown darker than the background, so it’s actually even hard to find them let alone see them at all. “America’s Friendliest Airport”. This appears to be the slogan for the airport. However, it wasn’t until a few visits to the website that it stuck out. The small font size and its location make the slogan just barely noticeable and easily passed by. With a poor color scheme and horrible placement of important features, visual appeal is the one component that Sky Harbor’s website lacks.

Different aspects of this site come together rather eloquently to achieve a higher standard on the World Wide Web. While critiquing a site based on its aspects is slightly more micro level thinking, when websites in general are viewed on a more macro stage many different things come into view. The electronic world is such a vast one with so much potential and such a promising future. It allows organizations to target such a variety of individuals and has such a profound impact on their lives and how they obtain information. This site is only the start to an electronic age that all organizations will have complete access to mass amounts of media options and persuasion techniques. Marketing and advertising are huge categories in this digital era that is upon us. If this age has just begun, who knows what will happen in another five, or even ten, years.