Travel Sector is not the worst culprit of poor website performance

Dear Editor, Your recent news article citing travel websites as being “atrocious” (British Travel Trade Fair Special Report, 3rd March), makes for some interesting observations. Whilst I would agree with Mr Hanna that organisations generally are not paying due diligence or attention to the ongoing performance of their websites, I would argue that the travel sector is far from being the worst performer on this front. Indeed, our ongoing monitoring of websites’ performance across all market sectors actually indicates that travel organisations generally have a faster download speed than many other industries, including media sites, telecoms and even internet organisations. Unfortunately, the issues your article identifies actually highlight a much larger problem with the online channel. Not only do the majority of UK organisations remain completely unaware of the online service challenge, they also demonstrate an apparent lack of concern over their customers’ poor web experiences. With online trading figures continuing to increase, this lack of awareness begs the question of how many wrong decisions about online business are being made due to a complete lack of visibility of the actual customer experience? Organisations – and not just those in the travel sector – must have access to 24/7 performance monitoring. Without this, how can they possibly assess the quality of service to customers or measure the effectiveness of online strategies? And without that, how can they truly leverage the low cost of transaction and opportunities for profit offered by the online channel? Yours sincerely, Bill Kirkwood, CEO Site Confidence