Ryanair User Interviews

The other day at work I had some free time and a bunch of bored colleagues, so I decided to sit them in front of Ryanair’s website and see if they could find the Fare Finder feature, or if they had heard of it before.

My first guinea pig was Megan, 25. When I asked her how she usually plans her holidays, she told me she usually has a budget and “the destination is the least important, as long as I haven’t been there”.

So I asked her to try booking a holiday without a destination. She started scrolled up and down the Homepage, going back to the main menu “You have to pick to a country don’t you?”.

I then told her there was actually a way to search without a destination, so she scrolled the entire Homepage, went back up, and started playing with the top menu. She clicked on Plan, then Search Flights, which brought her back to the Homepage. “It’s very difficult, isn’t it??”.

She then clicked back on Plan, read all the options of Explore, and picked Fare Finder, which brought her to that page. She then discovered the map and started playing with it “gaaaas”.

My second guinea pig, Stephen, 22, is of the same opinion: when they go on holidays, the destination is the least important, the tight budget is the thing that matters. They are pretty open when it comes to dates too.

They looked at destinations, but weren’t interested in any in particular, so they clicked Continue without selecting an actual destination. Ryanair doesn’t like that.

They tried selecting One Way and click Continue, selected a random destination (Dublin – Krakow) without selecting a date, clicked Continue, but nothing worked. They kept their destination selection, selected dates and found flights. “That’s not what I need, I’m going to go back”.

They went back to the Homepage, scrolled all the way down and spotted Cheap Flights in the footer. They clicked on Flights to Lanzarote as “it sounds quite nice.”.

They were then presented with a big yellow button “Book Now”, on which they clicked even though “I don’t really want to book, I would like more options”. This button brought them to the Fare Finder tool.

After clicking Let’s Go, they were brought to a list of flights. They clicked on Map View start playing “so cool, map view is fun”.

 

I then asked Cassie, 24, about her travel habits. She told me she likes going for short city breaks, if possible somewhere sunny. She usually goes through Ryanair or Skyscanner to find the best prices, with no particular destination. She loves being able to choose “Dublin to Everywhere” on Skyscanner, but she wouldn’t book through them though, as she doesn’t trust them. So she first finds her flights, then goes to Ryanair’s website (or other airlines) to book.

She says she usually travels on a budget, and the more money you spend on flights, the less you have for the actual holidays.

When I asked her to book a flight on Ryanair without a destination, she said “There’s a Fare Finder, but I can’t remember where it is.” When I asked how she became aware of it, she told me “I saw it on Skyscanner and wondered if Ryanair was doing it”. She wasn’t sure how she stumbled upon it, but thoughts that when Ryanair do their big sales, when clicking on the links, it brings you to the Fare Finder page.

She has tried many times typing Anywhere or Everywhere in the search box, but it never works.

She then had a look at the menu and found Fare Finder pretty fast.

 

Those 3 users all had in common the fact that whenever they travel, the destination is not important to them, only the budget.

The next 2 users both agreed that the most important thing when planning a trip is the destination. They could not understand how you could book something without knowing exactly where you wanted to go.

 

I asked Mathieu, 23, to show me how he usually books a holiday, and what he would do if he didn’t have a destination in mind. He normally only goes through Skyscanner to book his flights, but he indulged me.

He picked a One Way ticket, then looked at the countries/cities available from Dublin. He picked Bodrum, Turkey, because it sounded cool. There were no flights available during the dates he picked (winter time). He then picked Bordeaux, France, and the same happened. I think Ryanair doesn’t fly there during winter, but they don’t make this obvious nor give any explanation as to why flights aren’t available.

He then decided to choose the UK because “there has to be flights available from there!”, picked Liverpool and found flights.

I then asked him to try to book a flight without a destination. He found it quite confusing, scrolled up and down the Homepage “Skyscanner is a great site!”.

He clicked on Plan – Search Flights, which brought him back to the Homepage.

He clicked on Plan – Try Somewhere New, which offers a list of “must see” countries, but not what he was looking for.

He went back to Plan, read the list and wondered about Fare Finder. He clicked on it, and it brought him to the right page. “That’s pretty bad that they don’t make it easy to find, but it’s a good option once you know“.

His next reaction was “There’s a map view? Wooowww, it should be used on the Homepage!”.

After that, it was pretty hard to get him away from the map to let Killian do the test.

 

Killian, 20, also books his trips according to the destination. On the Homepage, he scrolled up and down, wondered why he was offered an option to “Visit Newcastle”.

He clicked on Route Map, which brought him to the Map page, on which you can select your budget and type of holidays.

“You can fly to Thessaloniki for only €46.99?? That’s so far and cheap!!”

 

Finally, here is the map view that fascinated all of my colleagues:

It is indeed a pretty cool feature, which I hadn’t thought much of before doing the tests. Now I agree, it belongs to the Homepage, along with the Fare Finder tool. It allows you to see how far you can fly, and shows you the prices when you click on a country.

Just like the Fare Finder, I think it would attract many customers if it was made obvious!