Some airline sites that do billions in revenue are so slow that they need Ajax spinners when you shop. Ugh.

Airline reservations systems are kind of fascinating, because they were some of the first really complex computer systems, and a lot of those crusty old bits are still chugging along fifty odd years later, with newer and newer piles of code layered on top like a demented tower of jenga.

http://thecodist.com/article/how_flight_reservations_work_pa...

http://thecodist.com/article/how_much_is_that_seat_by_the_wi...

There are ones with no TPF at the bottom now. And most res systems have no old tech in the shopping part... that's more often in the booking, change/cancel and check-in flows.

The customer expectations are much lower when shopping for a plane ticket. A painfully long experience is actually expected.

Friction is absent when buying anything from Amazon (because of webperf, UX, etc) so customer expectations standard is way higher. If something goes wrong on Target, Mediamarkt or Carrefour website, the sale is gone and off the customer goes to Amazon.

As a similar example, in France the main way to buy a train ticket was through the railway website, whose UX was poor (as were travel agencies). A small team went at it and built a competing booking website (Captaine Train) whose sole promise was a quick and easy to book a train ticket. They instantly removed the above mentioned friction and became a huge competitor almost overnight.

-amazon is terribly slow as well. Dhgate and the ali sites are faster on my phone than amazon.

Amazon is very slow to me. It takes several clicks and loads to get the product images to zoom

AliExpress.com is the fastest e-commerce site I have experienced. It was very apparent when I first browsed it - I wasn't even looking for speed, it simply jumped out at me. Especially the search.