Licensing/Selling Web Widget For Flight Booking Websites?

[Frost]

Hey fastlaners,

While searching for flights the other day I noticed that it's not always clear when you're traveling to a location with a different timezone, which makes it confusing to imagine the flight time in relation to the timezone you're going from/to. It's almost never clear and you have to take the extra step to look it up and decide accordingly.

So I thought of a simple visual way of representing the flight information on these websites that would be intuitive and informative.

Now before I go into making a mockup to see how people respond to it, I was actually wondering if it's something that I can sell to websites like skyscanner and so on. What kind of business deal can I expect to have regarding this feature? I have no idea how I might be able to sell it, what terms, price, etc... Does anybody have any experience in licensing/selling front-end web widgets?

For example, if it were something suited for e-commerce I would sell it as a Shopify app.

Regarding the idea in general:

Positive points:

• Easy to prototype and implement
• Haven't seen it anywhere

Weak points:

• Being a simple feature makes the barrier of entry lower of the websites to develop it themselves
• The need is not very clear. Further research is needed
• Since it's a graphical widget it might require a lot of customizability to fit each website's graphical interface

I appreciate your feedback

 

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[Xavier X]

As someone who books international flights often, I'd say most sites display:
- Flight duration.
- Arrival time in the destination's local time.

So to make your widget or browser extension more useful, you'll need to provide value beyond these data points.
If it's easy for you to make, then there's nothing stopping you from giving it a shot. Worst case scenario, you'll learn from it, or pivot it along the way.

 

[iivalky]

Hey fastlaners,

While searching for flights the other day I noticed that it's not always clear when you're traveling to a location with a different timezone, which makes it confusing to imagine the flight time in relation to the timezone you're going from/to. It's almost never clear and you have to take the extra step to look it up and decide accordingly.

So I thought of a simple visual way of representing the flight information on these websites that would be intuitive and informative.

Now before I go into making a mockup to see how people respond to it, I was actually wondering if it's something that I can sell to websites like skyscanner and so on. What kind of business deal can I expect to have regarding this feature? I have no idea how I might be able to sell it, what terms, price, etc... Does anybody have any experience in licensing/selling front-end web widgets?

For example, if it were something suited for e-commerce I would sell it as a Shopify app.

Regarding the idea in general:

Positive points:

• Easy to prototype and implement
• Haven't seen it anywhere

Weak points:

• Being a simple feature makes the barrier of entry lower of the websites to develop it themselves
• The need is not very clear. Further research is needed
• Since it's a graphical widget it might require a lot of customizability to fit each website's graphical interface

I appreciate your feedback

I don't have much experience with creating full-on websites/businesses, but it sounds like a cool concept. Try proposing the idea to trustable friends or family members and get their opinions on it. If you're having a problem with something (which in this case would be timezones), it's possible that others are experiencing the same thing - but before you just jump into it I would do some more research, as you said.

 

[Frost]

I don't have much experience with creating full-on websites/businesses, but it sounds like a cool concept. Try proposing the idea to trustable friends or family members and get their opinions on it. If you're having a problem with something (which in this case would be timezones), it's possible that others are experiencing the same thing - but before you just jump into it I would do some more research, as you said.

It's not really an entire website but more like a widget, that existing and well-established websites could eventually buy. What I want to find out first is what kind of business model can I have here, before I start researching something that has no potential in the first place

 

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[Frost]

As someone who books international flights often, I'd say most sites display:
- Flight duration.
- Arrival time in the destination's local time.

So to make your widget or browser extension more useful, you'll need to provide value beyond these data points.
If it's easy for you to make, then there's nothing stopping you from giving it a shot. Worst case scenario, you'll learn from it, or pivot it along the way.

It's actually just a different way of presenting the information of flight duration with local time, nothing groundbreaking