BEST WEB SERVICES REVEALED

A NATIONWIDE survey of 2500 Australians and hours of lab testing has ranked Australia’s favourite web services.

The survey was conducted by market research group TNS, which combined with lab testing from Access Testing for the 2010 AMBER Awards.

Fifteen companies were crowned by consumers as the leaders in transaction-based online services in Australia and New Zealand.

Winners were drawn from the complete field of all online services in Australia then long-listed to a group of more than 250 of the most used services. These were shortlisted by national survey and then lab tested to determine the premier services by Australian customers.

Co-founder of the AMBER Awards and independent Chair of the AMBER Awards process Paul McCarthy, says the research process is one of the largest independent reviews of digital services in Australia.

“(It) combines what people think with rigorous under-the-bonnet testing using real customers and real customer accounts,” he says.

“The leaders in online services, as voted by customers, are banks, which led the way in the customer satisfaction survey conducted by TNS and Lightspeed Research.”

Winners included Wotif, Suncorp Internet Banking, Witchery and the Bureau of Meteorology.

“Despite Australians high level of satisfaction with online banking, lab testing helped to highlight services customers value most in a ‘test drive’ environment, which saw travel, retail and government services emerge more strongly,” says McCarthy.