British Airways has maintained its position as the easiest to use airline website in the UK but low cost carriers have dramatically improved in the past 12 months.
The annual survey by user experience agency Webcredible sees the troubled airline stay at the number one spot with Virgin Atlantic giving away second place this year to EasyJet.
Ryanair has also jumped to eighth position in 2010 after languishing in bottom place in 2009.
Overall the airline sector has improved usability over the past year, according to the study, with the top 20 websites seeing an average score of 64%, up from 55% in 2009.
Webcredible says:
"Despite these overall improvements, 11 websites scored percentages in the 60’s and four websites scored between 40-50 per cent, demonstrating that many companies are still not doing enough to maximise their share of the potential revenue in this highly contested marketplace.
"The report highlighted that key guidelines that still need improving include supporting comparison shoppers, making pages ‘share friendly’, providing airport information, displaying clear progress bars and providing contact numbers during the booking process."
The study also included a number of online travel agency websites, such as Opodo, Lastminute.com and Netflights.com.
Each website was evaluated against 20 best practice guidelines and assigned a score of 0-5 for each guideline, with 5 being the maximum. With 20 guidelines in total, websites were assigned a total Web Usability Index rating out of 100.
The overall ranking for each website:
- British Airways - 78% (2009 71%)
- EasyJet - 77% (50%)
- Virgin Atlantic - 75% (70%)
- TravelRepublic - 73% (-)
- BMI - 70% (65%)
- Expedia - 68% (70%)
- Travelocity - 68% (70%)
- Ryanair - 66% (41%)
- Ebookers - 65% (56%)
- Opodo - 64% (62%)
- Travelbag - 63% (54%)
- FlyBe - 63% (53%)
- Monarch - 63% (47%)
- NetFlights - 62% (56%)
- Lastminute.com - 62% (59%)
- Jet2.com - 60% (49%)
- STA Travel - 56% (58%)
- First Choice - 56% (50%
- ThomsonFly - 52% (51%)
- Thomas Cook - 47% (47%)
NB: The full report can be
downloaded from the Webcredible website.