Why US travel sites needlessly fail their users

Recent dust-ups such as the gratis redesign by Dustin Curtis of spreadsheety American Airlines and the Mr X response have drawn attention to yet another hole in US business: Dreadfully unusable travel Web sites. National Public Radio's recent article exposes the tiniest tip of this iceberg. From the NPR story:

"Since 2007, there's been a steady decline in the percentage of travelers who actually like using the Internet to research and purchase any kind of travel, according to an online travel survey conducted in February by Forrester. Those who enjoy using the Internet to both plan and buy travel dropped from 53 percent in 2007 to 45 percent in 2009, the survey found.

"Forrester projected that by year end there will be 68 million online travel buyers, up from 66 million in 2008. But the survey found that an increasing number of travelers are willing to use 'offline' travel agencies."

Do the math: You've spent big bucks building a Web site with high functionality - like, say, airline ticketing - but people are so frustrated with the Web site that they're abandoning the online transactions and calling the toll-free number. How did this expensive mess come to be? Our take: A lack of focus on information design - "we don't have time/budget for that."

Our work with call centers clearly demonstrated that there is a cost per second for excess time spent on calls. over a year, it adds up to a very big number. What are bad Web sites costing the US travel industry? Time for US travel Websites to commit to better business. Test your Web sites, then fix them. Or lose to a competitor that "gets it."