Analysis of Quality of a Carrier’s Website to Increase Loyalty of Individual Customers

Abstract

During the pandemic, the competition for the consumer has moved from the format of live communication to the plane of remote interaction in the global environment. The sphere of cargo transportation makes no exception for that, since a highly competitive market is characterized by the presence of many transport and logistics companies that to struggle for a client actively use remote technologies, the leading place among which belongs to the company’s website. From a marketing standpoint, the website is recognized as one of the leading sales tools. Freight carriers that base their activities on the principles of customer focus give priority attention to quality of their own website, and therefore development of a methodology for its assessment, which is the purpose of this study, is of relevance.

The website of a leading company was chosen as the object of the study, while the section of the website dedicated to providing service for transportation of groupage cargo under contracts with individual shippers was its subject.

The article proposes the author’s method of assessing quality of the website of freight carriers from the standpoint of customer focus. The methodology is based on the author’s system of general and special criteria describing quality of the website and assessed according to a 100-point scale of values and a tenpoint scale of significance for a respondent. The assessment method is an open survey of consumers in the Global Network. The developed methodology is universal and can be used by any cargo carrier to improve quality of transport services.

Within the framework of the methodology suggested in the article, it is possible to diagnose, based on customers’ opinions, the «bottlenecks» of the section of a company’s website devoted to providing the service. Reducing customers’ comments regarding the points awarded allowed the author to identify the reasons for lower ratings and to propose reasonable measures to update corporate website to improve quality of transport services.