UNITED AIRLINES’ NEW WEB SITE
United
Airlines’recently redesigned Web site was awarded best
airline Internet site honors in Gomez Advisors’ recently
released Spring Airline Scorecard. In their report,
Gomez Advisors reported that several factors led to
United capturing the first place ranking including
outperforming the competition in the categories of on-site
resources, customer relationship, business flyer and
leisure flyer. United’s Internet site, www.ual.com, is the
only airline Web site to make Gomez Advisor’s Top 15
Travel Sites list.
Gomez Advisors called the new United site “one of the
big stories” of its latest scorecard. “This new site has
numerous easy-to-use features that will appeal to
hardened frequent flyers as well as occasional travelers
that may be new to the Web,” the Gomez evaluation
said. Gomez specifically applauded ual.com for its
prominent placement of the phone number for Web
customer support, the “best seat selector online today,”
the superior operation of the site’s new booking
calendar, its running frequent flyer balances, and its
full-service booking capabilities with all leading airlines,
rental car companies and hotels.
In addition, Peppers and Rogers Group, a leader in the
one-to-one marketing field, has placed ual.com in the
“top 25 Web sites” for its customer interaction and
customized experience. Peppers and Rogers reviewed
over 400 Web sites from a broad range of industries,
measuring 30 different online capabilities. In their
February report, Peppers and Rogers stated the site “is
well-organized so that customers can easily find the
information that is of interest to them.”
“The multiple accolades that the new ual.com is receiving
and the overwhelming response to our flight paging
service are strong endorsements of the new design and
capabilities of our Web site,” said Rick Collins, Director
of Internet Marketing at United Airlines’ new
e-commerce division. “It is also a reflection of the many
excellent suggestions we received in customer focus
groups before we revamped the site.”
A new flight paging service that debuted on the site in
December has attracted heavy usage, indicating high
consumer satisfaction with the site’s new functionality.
United has already received more than 30,000 requests
from customers who wish to be proactively informed of
flight delays, cancellations and gate information on their
personal computers, text-enabled cellular phones or
alphanumeric pagers. A recent Chicago snowstorm
prompted a high of 1,800 paging requests in just one
day.
Web site sales at the carrier recently reached an all-time
high of $2.7 million in one day, more than doubling the
figure of just six months ago. Over 25% of United’s
online users are Premier level or higher (they fly at least
25,000 miles a year) in United’s Mileage Plus® frequent
flyer program, a figure the airline attributes to its robust
online reservations system and attractive features for
frequent fliers. Visitors to the ual.com site topped 3.4
million in February.
The revamped site offers faster access to the most
popular features. Users can now research fares and
schedules, check up-to-the-minute flight information, and
access Mileage Plus® account information directly from
the home page, reducing the number of clicks required to
accomplish the most popular tasks. All functions have
also been reorganized into four major categories on the
home page to make it easy to find the desired page or
section.
ual.com gives consumers the ability to purchase travel
with over 500 airlines, book reservations with 45 rental
car companies and 30,000 hotels worldwide, take
advantage of discount travel offered through weekly and
seasonal E-Fares?’ posted on the site, and register for
the new flight paging service for digital notification of gate
information, delays and cancellations on United
Airlines-operated flights . In addition, United’s frequent
flyers can use the site to track Mileage Plus account
information, request upgrades and redeem miles for
award travel online.
——-