Following the two empathy maps, I will develop the two personas I used further. I will also add a third one, as the parents/children combination is very frequent among Ryanair’s users.
A user persona is a fictitious character, created in order to understand our users better. The more details you can bring, the more real that persona will feel.
The following 3 personas represent groups of users looking to book cheap flights, using Ryanair: a poor student, a pensioner on a tight budget and a father of 3. All have different goals and frustrations, different expectations and criteria when it comes to booking a holiday.
Persona 1: Sébastien is a 22 year-old art student who loves travelling but is constantly broke. He is single, and prefers travelling alone, as he gets to make all decisions concerning restaurants, activities, pubs etc. He is French, and lives in Paris. From Paris Beauvais, he has access to many destinations using Ryanair.
He uses Ryanair as it is usually the cheapest company. When it comes to deciding his detination, he will tell you: “I don’t care where I’m flying, as long as I’ve never been there before!”
He used to struggle when booking flights, as he used to go through a lot of back and forth, selecting different cities and dates, trying to find the cheapest option. He also used Skyscanner quite regularly, as it allows a search without a destination. Then he wondered if that feature also existed on Ryanair, and after combing the Homepage, he finally found the Fare Finder.
Sébastien loves the flexibility Fare Finder offers: he can just enter the dates of his school holidays or long weekends and pick the cheapest flight!
The only drawback is that he wishes he could use the option from the search bar on the Homepage, saving himself 2 clicks. It seems very little, but he is busy at school and starts feeling guilty if he spends too long booking holidays…
Persona 2: Elaine is a retired teacher. She is 65 year-old, and her 30 year-anniversary is approaching. For that reason, she would like to surprise her husband with a trip abroad. Both of them being pensioners, they can’t afford pricey holidays, and would rather spend their money on a nice hotel than a flight ticket.
Her daughter Sally told her about the Fare Finder tool and she decided to give it a go, as she’s pretty open when it comes to destination and dates.
She is not very tech savvy and is finding it hard to navigate the website and find that particular tool. She can only find the regular way of searching, in which you need to enter a destination and dates, and scroll through the dates to find the cheapest option.
To be honest, she would rather be gardening or doing crosswords than sitting in front of a computer… But one thing being a teacher has taught her is patience, so she’ll keep searching until she finds what she’s looking for. If not, she’ll call her daughter for help!
Persona 3: John Murray is a father of three. He is 43 and is married to Mary who is 38. Their children, Elly, Justin and Peter are 3, 6 and 8.
They love going on holidays during the summer, but this can become very expensive very fast.
For this reason, they use low cost airlines such as Ryanair as the flights are cheaper, especially if they don’t go to popular destinations.
John usually is the one booking the flights, and he very often goes through Skyscanner to find the best deals, but he noticed that it’s always Ryanair coming up with the cheapest flights. It really frustrates him not being able to search without a destination on Ryanair and sees it as a waste of time having to use 2 websites.
He’s a very busy man, working long hours in finances and would rather spend his time at home being with his kids and wife. For that reason, he usually books his flights during his lunch break, which is why it’s important for him to do so rapidly.
He is not aware of the existence of the Fare Finder tool.
To conclude, all 3 personas are quite different: one is a young student, one is a retired teacher, the last one is a family man.
Despite their differences, all want cheap flights, without caring too much about the destination.
All three would make great use of the Ryanair Fare Finder tool, if only they knew it existed, or if it was easier to access. For the moment, the fact that this feature is hidden means it’ll waste their time, or that they won’t even know to use it. And one thing that nobody has too much of nowadays is time.
Having that tool on the Homepage would mean they wouldn’t need to use websites such as Skyscanner anymore. Reducing their number of clicks would reduce their frustrations and bring more and happier customers to Ryanair.
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