When it comes to websites - if you want to show how good you are don't dwell on the issue of delight. Give the ADD SOBs who visit what they want and fast.
Of late - I have been experimenting with websites. What happened to 3 clicks to booking. I am tracking an average of 20 clicks from opening site to a decision point.
Gerry McGovern picked on the recent study in HBR - which is to be highly recommended reading.
http://hbr.org/2010/07/stop-trying-to-delight-your-customers/ar/1
In my view we are now going to have to deal with speed as a major issue. Gosh it has been years since we had to worry about dogs (ie r e a l l y slow) such as AOL browsers. Now we going to be concerned with an expectation from the user community that travel results will be instant.
And this creates a problem for all of us... except Google. Consider this. If big bad G has cached avails on most airlines then he can serve that up as instant results to a user using free text entries. Everyone else will be at least a click away. Google therefore WILL have an unfair advantage over everyone else in air search.
Think about that....
And the reference to Quick and the Dead (in this case meaning everyone else but Google - check out the biblical reference).Does this give Google a god like quality. Perhaps that is why they chose G as the initial for their name.
The phrase is part of a passage in King James version of the First Epistle of Peter (a book in the Bible) which reads
For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.
1 Peter 4:3-5
