Usability Study Indicates Internet Users Prefer to Book Travel with Full-Service Travel Site Rather than Auction Site or Airline Web Site

Full service travel sites prefered over travel auction sites ...

"In conjunction with World Usability Day, Human Factors International (HFI), TechSmith Corp., and Michigan State University today announced the findings of their usability study of online travel sites, which indicates that Internet users prefer to book travel on Orbitz.com rather than auction site Priceline.com or airline site Southwest.com.

The theme of World Usability Day 2005 is "Making it easy!" Based on the results of this study, Orbitz was best able to achieve that goal. Sixty-three percent of study participants ranked Orbitz as the easiest to use -- that figure was consistent across both novice and experienced users. Sixty-seven percent of participants, regardless of their Internet skill level, ranked Southwest as the hardest to use. Ninety-five percent of participants would recommend Orbitz, while Priceline would be recommended by 79 percent of participants, and Southwest would receive the recommendation of nearly 38 percent of participants."   continued ...   (Via Yahoo! Finance)