I read Joe Sharkey's New York Times piece about American Airlines new women-specific web site yesterday, rolled my eyes at all of the obvious blunders on said site, and put it on my "to blog about" list. As a "female business traveler" myself, this is one topic that merits a little further discussion.

"Pink thinking" abounds in the American Airlines' "women's" concept, as well as in its execution:

- Initially the site was lavender (sigh), but they quickly changed that.

- The comments by the women interviewed for Sharkey's piece and the ones he mentions from the Flyertalk.com site all basically found the idea of the site and its content to be stereotyped and insulting.

- The customer experience at American Airlines was not noticeably improved (at least not noticed by all the commenting female business travelers) as part of its new outreach to women.

On the other hand, had the airlines taken a more transparent marketing approach, they might have done the following:

- Talk with women and consider the magazines and sites they already read/visit to discover that perhaps lavender is nowhere on their current color palette radar, for one.

- Talk with existing female customers to see 1) if they'd even use/appreciate such a site, 2) if so, what sort of content WOULD be useful/relevant, and 3) how they'd prefer to have that information delivered (boring corporate-speak presented on a no-design, dull site would probably not be one of their choices).

- Talk with existing customers for months/years in advance and improve the full customer experience (cleanliness, seat comfort, service/attention) before trying to tout an all-new and amazing women-friendly business approach to the customers who are most likely to see under the radar.

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As one of the quoted women in Sharkey's article mentions, it should be no big surprise that women want the same things that men do in air travel. Women may tend to have higher customer experience standards, but a lot of guys are not loving the idea of flying these days either. What an airline should be striving to serve from the get-go: the highest common denominator, no gender about it.

Instead, while American may have developed this site with good intentions - given the uproar from the women who would clearly be their core customers, how'd they get this far offbase? Wyndham Hotels, which appears to be a co-sponsor or something from its placement on the web site, is respected for providing legitimately women-specific service themselves (mainly due to women's extra safety concerns while traveling alone). So, did the airline think to tap Wyndham's "Women On Their Way" database as part of their initial research? It doesn't seem like it.

Anyway -

The big problem now is that American slacked off and approached this wrong, initially - and with a big kerplunk, so the brand will have a lot of ground to gain to even return to square one with female travelers. My suggestion? Take all the lessons learned from this large mistake and redesign the regular American Airlines site and examine/improve the entire frustrated flyer's customer experience to the higher standards of women. Done well, such an effort will not alienate men, but will produce exponential positive word-of-mouth among every as-yet quite cynical air customer, "female business traveler" or otherwise.