This is quite possibly the single worst transactional website run by a major corporation: Air Canada – Welcome!.

Example? Well, Safari, like IE, autofills forms. If you try to buy a ticket from Air Canada, Safari fills in the form, but under the box for area code (labeled here country code), Safari puts in USA instead of 914. An easy error for the program to make, because Country Code reads a lot like Country.

The problem is that the AC site then responds more than 100 times (I counted) with a javascript error that says, “text input where number was expected [OK].” There’s no way to kill this loop… I ended up having to force quit Safari and then use a different browser to buy a ticket.

My concern isn’t that they’re losing some ticket sales, it’s that they don’t appear to know or care. That no one is benchmarking and simplifying and reality checking a site that accounts for a huge chunk of their revenue.

How can this be? You ought to design your website with a pencil and paper or with photoshop and hand it over to the IT guys once you get the marketing part right.

PS to my non-international readers, happy Thanksgiving!