Consumers - We think travel websites are confusing. Friday, 23rd October 2009 Source : Timothy O Neil-Dunne ~ T2Impact.com

With travel trying to cram more and more information into their websites - we are beginning to see a customer backlash.

I got an email the other day from Leonardo/VFM. In it they quoted an interesting statistic - only 34% of US online travelers surveyed believe that travel Web sites clearly present their choices and trade-offs.

North American Technographics?Travel Online Survey Q1 2009 (US), Forrester Research, Inc., February 2009.

That tells me something that I have long suspected that the Consumer is being increasingly browned off by the junk in front of him.

At today's Web in Travel session of which I was a panelist - my fellow stage occupants - Ram Badrinathan, General Manager-Asia Pacific, PhoCusWright Inc and Mark Inkster, Managing Director, Microsoft Online Services Group, Southeast Asia also agreed that things are not good.

Last week's missive from Gerry McGovern focused on an example from the BBC websites. The purity of the service keeps a lot of the clutter away from the process of diving into detail. Given the amount of screens of information the user has to go through to get to the pure information nugget (he or she) wants, this makes it easier.

I sense there is a backlash from the consumer who is tired of being bombarded with "just in case" information when he wants to get to only information that is contextual to his request. Thus those who push everything including the kitchen sink and let any (as opposed to only relevant) stakeholders have sway in the scarce real estate on the web (particularly above the fold), should take heed.

Today's web user will move away from a site that is too cluttered and if you judge by some of the panelists today on the OTA panel - UI/UE trumps content.

Now that is food for thought

Cheers
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