Ryanair - Flying In The Face of Usability (or: 9 Reasons Why I Hate Ryanair)

Ah, Ryanair.  Where to begin?  We all know, and begrudgingly accept the fact that it's cheap, you get what you pay for, and it's very annoying to have to pay for extra luggage and debit card fees.  That's not new.  But there's some other things I noticed when trying to book a Ryanair flight that just make no sense.  Nine things, in fact - all of them flying in the face of common sense.

Some of these are purely usability and business related, and fixing them would surely add more money into the back pocket of Michael O'Leary, which I am sure would please him.  He likes money.  Others, I shall categorise into "trying to hoodwink the customer".  In this day and age, customers aren't stupid, and the way Ryanair try to pull the wool over your eyes during the booking process is quite shocking.

Anyway, I shall begin:

1.  No Mobile Site

Yes, Ryanair have no mobile optimised website.  Neither do they have a mobile app.  This is quite staggering given the scale of the business.  This wouldn't be so bad if the website was usable on a mobile, but it isn't.  Trying to browse Ryanair.com on an iPhone 4 reveals two interesting quirks - the drop down menus to scroll through locations only stays on screen for about 10 milliseconds, making it almost impossible to choose your destination; and the keyboard for entering the captcha (more on this later!) also hides itself after every key press, making captcha entry a long and hard drawn out process.


2.  T&Cs confirmation before flight search

Can you see the tiny box yet?

So, you arrive at the site and do your flight search, ignoring all of the irrelevant links littering the site (free poker, anyone?).  You hit "Book Now" and are faced with an error because you forgot to accept the Terms and Conditions.  Easily done, given the teeny-weeny font size used, and the equally teeny-weeny tick box.  But, more importantly - why create a new drop off stage for the purchase funnel right at the start of the process?  Even if only a small percentage of people give up here, it's completely unneccessary.  Especially as they ask you later on in the process (if you get that far!)


3.  Random Redesign

Do you remember Ryanair's old website design and branding?  It was gaudy and horrible.  Looked like something from a failed 1998 web design project.  Luckily they've tarted up their homepage so it looks more contemporary, but as soon as you get past the search stage, you're dumped into the old style of site again.

It's a different width, and different colours.  It's awful!


4. Captcha Attack

The website usability team clearly decided that the stage I described above wasn't enough of a hassle for potential customers, so before revealing the results of the search (complete with confusing rebrand) - they throw a captcha at you.

Another nice little hurdle.  How big's that drop off funnel getting now?

As an aside - look at the lovely breadcrumbs trail.  Look what happens if you click back to "search".  Ain't that sweet, in an awful kind of way?

4.  Google Ads taking you to competitor offerings for the same service

The next stage shows you your flight and costs.  Hoorah - at last!  But what's this?  A crude frame of Google AdSense ads on the right hand side.  Someone has clearly told Michael O'Leary that a good way to make money from your website is to pepper it with ads.  But ads at a key stage of the conversion process?  And ads for competitors, offering the same service you're trying to sell?  Surely that doesn't make sense?

I'm trying to book a flight to Bydgoszcz in this example, so why lure me away with flight comparison sites so I can search elsewhere for a cheaper one, from a more convenient airport perhaps?  Or from a website that's less awful?


5.  The Travel Insurance Riddle

We've all seen the little games that do the rounds online; usually quite easy but difficult to solve - such as "count the number of e's in this sentence" or an optical illusion.  Ryanair have chucked in a game of their own.

It's called the "Don't Buy Travel Insurance" game.  Will you win?  There's only one rule:
If you are already insured you can select "Don't Cover Me" in the drop down box.


Did you get that?  It was in deliberately tiny font, so you may not have done.  Sounds simple enough though.  Let's play - here's the drop down box:

Can you see it yet?  It's not after "Denmark" and before "Finland".  It's not at the top; it's not at the bottom.  Yes, there it is.  Cleverly located between "Latvia" and "Lithuania".  Just where you'd expect something entitled "Don't Cover Me" to sit.  Shysters.

As an aside they're also not doing themselves any favours here by not defaulting "United Kingdom" and "Ireland" to the top of the list (indeed, "United Kingdom" needs a scroll down to get to) and if you fail to select anything, you can't progress to the next stage.  The drop off funnel expands even more!


6. Stop Hassling Me!

Having solved the riddle, you might think you can get to the next stage and pay.  No!  Not until you've actively opted out of wanting:

• Priority Boarding
• Confirmation SMS (a snip at only £1.50!)
• A snazzy Ryanair Official Cabin Bag (only £69?  I'll take two!)

Did I mention they also asked me to agree to the T&Cs again?  

7.  The emotional scam

Come on Michael: you're better than this.

So you've decided you don't want travel insurance.  You must really know this, as it was so difficult to say so.  But no - O'Leary really wants to make sure you don't want it (isn't he kind?) by thrusting an unsightly brown pop up box at you before letting you continue (there go some more customers slipping down the drop out funnel...).  Main gripes:

• It's brown and offensive
• The stats in there could be clearly ficticious; given they are not backed up in any way
• The "No Thanks, I'll Take The Risk" not only is a leading response, but also shown in grey text and in such a way that it doesn't look like a clickable button (unlike the garish green "Yes Please" button)

8. Take a Time Out

It took me so long to digest the horrible messages, I timed out.  At which point I get presented with an awful screen and get sent back to the start.  *suppresses scream*

9. Now Where Am I?  This really Hertz.

I appear to have dropped out of the Ryanair purchase process altogether.  After all, the Ryanair logo has disappeared and been replaced with the confirmation page for a car rental.  I didn't realise I was renting a car, I thought I was booking a flight?  Where's the reference to my flight?

What's that noise?  Ah, yes - another small percentage of customers falling out of the process...


So, in conclusion, I think Ryanair are cutting off their nose to spite their face in many of their usability and marketing "features," not to mention their astonishing lack of mobile presence or functionality.  It smacks of something that hasn't been tested, hasn't been thought about,  and most importantly - clearly doesn't treat the customer as an intelligent human being, or consider their needs and wants in the flight booking process.  In this day and age online, that truly is criminal.

And after all that, I need a holiday...

That's Not My Name

So, Starbucks are trying to build relationships with their customers by asking them their name when they order a coffee.

Is this a marketing ploy, a drive for efficiency in serving or is the world's largest coffee chain genuinely trying to get to know their customers?

In my eyes, it's very unclear. It's a confusing experience, and not something that comes naturally to either customer or barista. For instance, the person serving you asks your name, then instantly looks away and tries to daub it on a polystrene cup with a black marker, before shuffling away and serving the next customer. They aren't interested in your name. They don't want to ask you your name. You don't want them to ask you your name. They're not going to remember your name.

Conversely, you don't care what their name is. You just want your coffee.

Problems arise when your name is difficult to spell, or difficult to understand. In London, this is a particular problem as many of the baristas are not English native speakers. Hence, "Wayne" can get turned into anything from "Wanye," to "Wyn," "Yawn" or even "Steve" (I got desperate).

However, the most illogical thing about the whole debacle is that, once the cup is successfully branded with an owner, it is then proudly encased in a cardboard sleeve which totally obscures the name! This results in an amusing game of "lift the cup" to determine which one is, indeed, yours.

Of course, when you go back the second, third, and all subsequent times, the baristas have learnt your name and converse with you like an old friend; enquiring as to your well being and making general small talk about the weather and mutual acquaintances (Wyn hasn't been in for a while, Steve, is he OK?). Actually of course they don't. In my local branch, the staff appear to have seen sense and have stopped asking for peoples' names.

This pleases me; their silence is endearing me to them for standing up to the daft corporate policy, and, in a roundabout way, makes me want to go back for more coffee.

So perhaps Starbucks got it right in the end. I must find out the name of their Marketing Director and send on my thanks.