The online retail giant Amazon.com (News - Alert) seems to be the exception when it comes to providing an excellent web experience for its users. Grabbing the top slot in the 2013 Temkin Web Experience Ratings, Amazon.com proved it is no fluke that the company has consistently occupied the position of world’s number one e-commerce company for so many years.
The financial services company USAA grabbed the next two spots for its banking and insurance businesses.
The Internet is without any doubt the most amazing invention of our age. The Internet has made our life fast and convenient, from shopping to banking and everything in between. With the all-encompassing presence of the Internet, it is only natural to expect that this new commerce channel would be well equipped to provide an exceptional user experience. But unfortunately this is not the case. In its latest research report, customer experience research and consulting firm Temkin Group Research has said that customers across all industries not happy about their online experiences.
The research firm surveyed 10,000 U.S consumers and examined 211 companies across 19 industries to arrive at the conclusion that web experiences aren't improving and that overall web experiences are in a rather poor state.
Only 6 percent of companies managed to earn a “strong” or “very strong” rating in the report , while 63 percent earned “weak”" or “very weak” ratings. The research also shows that web experiences aren't improving. Over half of the companies that were in the 2012 and 2013 ratings earned lower scores this year.
However, the two above mentioned companies – Amazon.com and USAA – emerged as a silver lining in the overall web experience cloud. Amazon.com and USAA's ratings were 20 points above their industry averages.
Other companies – Regions, U.S. Bank, eBay (News - Alert), Advantage Rent A Car, credit unions, and QVC – grabbed good ranking as well.
Banks generally earned the highest average Temkin Web Experience Ratings, followed by investment firms, retailers, credit card issuers, and hotel chains. The five industries that earned “very weak” ratings included Internet service providers, TV service providers, airlines, health plans, and wireless carriers. The companies that earned lowest ratings were MSN, Health Net, EarthLink and Cablevision.
In the tech space, virtualization specialist VMware was the only technology vendor that earned an “excellent” rating in the 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings for Tech Vendors. VMware and SAP analytics topped the rankings, followed by three Microsoft (News - Alert) units that included servers, business applications and desktop software.
Edited by Blaise McNamee