Tiger, Jetstar click with website searches

SYDNEY – Budget airlines Tiger and Jetstar have beaten Australia’s major airlines on website performance, with Tiger having the highest ranking flight search functionality while Jetstar claimed fastest homepage load time, according to a report by Nielsen Online.

The report, which assessed Australia’s leading airlines’ websites for performance and availability, found Tiger Airways’ website flight search function performed better than any of its competitors, primarily as a result of its high performance search engine and low page weight, both of which directly related to the site’s low loading time.

Jetstar’s recently revamped website saw vast improvements to response time, with a 28 percent faster loading homepage, ranking it first amongst the websites assessed by Nielsen Online.

The website upgrade also resulted in 30 percent faster flight search times, earning the site fifth place in the flight search ranking.

“Time is money for airline and travel sites, and in the Australian online travel sector we haven’t historically seen much worth getting excited about,” said Megan Clarken, managing director, Pacific, Nielsen Online.

“The performance of these two sites, Tiger and Jetstar, is raising the expectations of Australian consumers, and this will in turn raise the bar for airline and travel sites.

“Those sites not working towards meeting and exceeding that level do so at their peril,” Clarken added.

In addition to performance, the Nielsen report looked at availability of airline and travel websites, using homepage uptime percentage over a two-week period to rank the key industry players.

During the two weeks that the study took place, four sites maintained 100 percent uptime – travel.com.au, Total Travel, Qantas and Air New Zealand.

Air New Zealand also topped the list for flight search function availability, followed by Flight Centre and Virgin Blue.

“In this industry where every click is critical, website availability is a key business success metric,” said Clarken.

“If consumers can’t reach you online, it won’t take long before they start looking to your competitors instead.”

Top 10 performing travel website for homepage and flight search page availability

Homepage

1. Travel.com.au
2. Total Travel
3. Qantas
4. Air New Zealand
5. Jetstar
6. Zuji
7. Flight Centre
8. Tiger Airways
9. Orbitz
10. Virgin Blue

Flight Search

1. Air New Zealand
2. Flight Centre
3. Virgin Blue
4. Tiger Airways
5. Orbitz
6. Singapore Airlines
7. Qantas
8. Cathay Pacific
9. Regional Express
10. Jetstar