Consulting More Sites Leads to Customer Frustration While Online Booking
The internet was supposed to make travel booking simpler, quicker, more accessible and convenient - but according to consumer behavior research, the reality is somewhat different. Increasingly, consumers get swamped by a large variety of opportunities to compare and pick from similar products and information, and the increasing complexity of products and services.
An investigation from Yieldify, a specialist in customer journey optimisation, reveals that almost 42% of shoppers are taking more time to book travel than five years back. Their study demonstrates that almost 80% of consumers state that they visit various sites just to decide where they want to go.
According to the 'How We Book Now' report, says there are two major drivers for the increase, with almost 50% of consumers conveying multiple purchase journeys for each trip as almost half are reserving every component separately.
What's more, the expanded volume of online travel sites has led to “analysis paralysis” with half of the consumers saying they presently visit more or a lot bigger number of sites than five years ago.
The findings are similar to research carried out by Google and Phocuswright in 2017 with 55% of travelers saying they need to seek out too many sources of travel information before deciding.
When it comes to making the booking, 46% of customers say they are influenced by past experience, 41% say reviews and 39% say cost. Price still has the edge for pulling consumers to a travel site in the first place for 49% of travelers compared with 46% that state it’s their previous experiences.
With such long and complex online searches and queries, the report says companies ought to consider personalisation; however, 35% of consumers are not comfortable with brands collecting and sharing their personal data information.
The finding presents a challenge for travel organizations as 80% of consumers would like a personalised experience while booking a trip if they receive something in return.
The research was carried out by Censuswide with 1,005 participants split between the U.K. and the U.S. Respondents had researched and purchased travel-related items online in the past 12 months.
The increasing number of products available and the increasing amount of decision-relevant information leads to consumer confusion or frustration if the information is too similar, too complex, too ambiguous, and too much.