Discount flight carriers Tiger and Jetstar are one up on Australia’s major airlines when it comes to website performance.

Tiger is reported to have the highest ranking flight search functionality, while Jetstar claimed fastest homepage load time, according to a report from Nielsen Online.

The report, which assessed Australia’s leading airlines’ websites for performance and availability, found Tiger Airways’ website flight search function performed better than any of its competitors, primarily as a result of its high performance search engine and low page weight, both of which directly related to the site’s low loading time.

Jetstar’s recently revamped website saw vast improvements to response time, with a 28% faster loading homepage, ranking it first among the websites assessed by Nielsen Online.

The website upgrade also resulted in 30% faster flight search times, earning the site fifth place in the flight search ranking.

“The performance of these two sites, Tiger and Jetstar, is raising the expectations of Australian consumers, and this will in turn raise the bar for airline and travel sites. In this industry where every click is critical, website availability is a key business success metric. If consumers can’t reach you online, it won’t take long before they start looking to your competitors instead,” explains Megan Clarken, managing director, Pacific, Nielsen Online.

The Nielsen report also looked at availability of airline and travel websites, using homepage uptime percentage over a two-week period to rank the key industry players.

During the two weeks that the study took place, four sites maintained 100% uptime – travel.com.au, Total Travel, Qantas and Air New Zealand.

Air New Zealand also topped the list for flight search function availability, followed by Flight Centre and Virgin Blue.