Web Performance And User Experience

Even under the best of circumstances say, planning a ski vacation or a romantic getaway

booking a rental car online is unlikely to be the highlight of a consumers trip planning experience. While theres some relish in comparing the amenities of alpine inns, booking a car is painless at best in part because car rental companies have been slow to establish the level of usability and performance consumers have come expect from other online transactions.

Consumers can also go directly to one of the major car rental brands, all of which operate online storefronts in addition to airport and neighborhood rental locations. These brand sites offer full reservation services, access to the latest company offers and promotions, plus enrollment and log-in for popular frequent-renter membership programs such as Thriftys Blue Chip or Hertz #1 clubs.

While both the online travel agents and the brand sites have their loyalists, the Hertz.coms of the world have traditionally lagged behind aggregator sites in terms of user experience and performance levels. This is not entirely surprising, given that the online travel agents have a born-and-raised Web-only business model where every customer interaction is online, and there are no brick-and-mortar operations competing for resources and strategic focus. For the car rental brands, however, their online channel represents just one customer touchpoint among several and a somewhat smaller point on their overall operational grid.

The performance gap may be closing, however. A March, 2008 study by Keynote examined the performance of nine of the top Web destinations for booking rental cars, including both brand sites and online travel agencies Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity. The Rental Car Reservation/Customer Experience Study enlisted 200 panelists for each site, who were asked to mimic the actions of a typical car rental consumer, performing a variety of scripted tasks over a 30-day period. Using the resulting data and panelist feedback, the sites were ranked according to customer experience measures and technical service levels. The research is part of a multiphase study conducted annually, enabling trend comparisons over time.

The overall Keynote Customer Experience Index is the highest-level score of customer experience generated by the study, based on an aggregate score of site performance across 250 customer experience metrics. The overall ranking shows which sites are most successful in terms of satisfying customers, driving acquisition, and supporting a companys brand.

Four sites provide the best overall rental car experience for site visitors: Travelocity, Budget, Expedia and Enterprise. Significantly, Travelocity was the only aggregator to maintain its dominant position relative to the branded car rental sites. Performance from Orbitz dropped significantly, showing declines in both conversion rates and customer satisfaction. While Expedia finished in the top 40% overall, it lost significant ground from 2007. With the exceptions of Budget and Enterprise, all of the car rental companies finished in the bottom half of the rankings, with Thrifty earning the dubious last-place honors.

Technical Performance: More Than Just Speed

In addition to evaluating customer experience on a subjective level, the Keynote research assessed seven factors related to the sites service levels:

1.High-Speed Response

2.Dial-up Response

3.Response Time Consistency

4.Geographic Uniformity

5.Load Handling

6.Availability

7.Outage Hours

by: Chris samuels

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