BUDGET airlines’ Web sites are hampering their chances of maximising sales because they are so slow and sluggish, according to a survey of Internet performance.
The study found that the efforts by no-frills airlines to get customers to switch from to on-line booking, a much cheaper distribution channel, is being held up because surfers simply become impatient and cannot wait for pages to download.
The survey, conducted by performance monitoring company Jyra Research, found Debonair’s Web site to be the worst offender for sluggishness with over 10% of page requests failing or timing out.
Debonair also had the most lethargic Web site with average response times of 77 seconds. Ryanair’s site gave the best performance but, the survey indicates, its response time was still 25 seconds.
The research was carried out by measuring time taken for each Web site to respond to a request to download its home page.
The time recorded was the time it took for the home page to respond in some form, whether this be the successful download of a page or to advise that the request had failed or timed-out.
Jyra Research chief executive officer Paul Robinson said: “Despite companies selling goods and services on-line to improve customer service and reduce transaction costs, its clear UK consumers are not as keen to embrace the idea.
“If people are not receiving a high quality of service via the Internet, the reluctance to adopt e-commerce is hardly surprising.”
Ryanair commercial director Michael Cawley said the his company’s site was still in its infancy but was still inundated. He added that he felt 25 seconds was not a long time to wait.
“People wait much longer on the telephone to make a booking.”
Debonair chairman and chief executive Franco Mancassola said: “We have not been as fast as we would have liked but we have been concentrating on our friends, the travel agents.
“But we are working on the matter and, who knows, we will probably become the fastest.”