Site review: easyjet.com

May 9, 2010 in review

Firstly, apologies for the silence: Real Life seems to be happening, and Twitter has taken a backseat – as have reviews. Anyway: I’m back!

I was recently looking at flights to Greece, and as part of my research phase I visited the ubiquitously-orange EasyJet site…and I bet you can guess what’s coming up next! Yup – Review Time! God, my life’s incredible.

How did it fare? Do the bargain-basement brand values carry through to their site? Read on and find out!

Disclaimer: I’ve used false dates for the purposes of this review – so don’t bother coming to my house to steal my pants on the dates shown in the screenshots. I will be in, and will summarily execute underwear thieves. Unless you come bearing fig rolls, in which case you’ll be robbed of them first – and then executed. Understood? Good.

Another disclaimer: If you don’t like the colour orange, don’t read this article.

First impressions

In a word? Excellent. The journey from the homepage is well thought out, with clear hierarchy and good placement of offers. The quick quote calendar function works as expected, and there’s no hint of the disgusting messaging chaos of the kind only seen by other bargain flight brands such as RyanAir (who’s site is, frankly, shite).

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Strong brand image, good layout and looks like the site is designed to expand (for when they decide to start offering EasyPants or whatever). So far, so good. Let’s look at the rest of the journey for buying flights.

Usability & customer journey

As we get into the nitty-gritty of researching flights and costs, the site comes into it’s own.

The layout of the flights results is very well done – and as with most good ideas, it’s very simple. The date & date picker is echoed above the actual results, and distinguishing between the outbound and return journeys is easy. As I’ll pick up on later in this review, there’s also a persistent basket feature on the right which echoes the user’s selections very well.

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I do have one minor gripe at this stage: it’s not immediately clear that one has to click on the flight result they want – but that’s a very minor issue as it’s quite easy to figure out. When selecting a particular flight, the orange outlines change to be solid to indicate a chosen flight…

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…which are then echoed in the basket:

Once the flight dates & times are selected/agreed on, the continue button lights up, and you’re on to the next step. This is a blatant UPSELL UPSELL moment – but it’s done very well, and most (if not all) options are relevant: insurance, luggage allowances, and various other bits & pieces.

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Again, the persistent basket nicely echoes (and reminds) that there’s no luggage allowance by default, so if you want to check some in, you need to add it. This – for me, at least – is good as I’ve been stung before by crap website messaging around this. Sure enough, once added, the basket is highlighted to indicate the product is there…

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It also goes some way to making sure you understand exactly how much luggage you’re allowed. So, since the offer of skiing insurance wasn’t really required in sunny Greece (I did say it was mostly relevant…not entirely), it’s on to the next step. In one last-ditch attempt, though, they try and sell me one last thing:

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Honestly, this isn’t as annoying as it looks – mostly because the rest of the journey has been very slick, but also because it’s still relevant (i.e it’s general travel insurance rather than extreme sports insurance). I suppose that’s something to take note of: make the experience as smooth as possible, and people may not mind the extra upsell push.

In order to get around in sunny Greece, a hire car is required…and this is something I’ve booked separately in the past. However, on the next screen, a nice (?) surprise awaited:

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EasyJet have partnered with Europcar. This is good (in my eyes) for two reasons:

1. It eliminates any worry of whether a car is available on particular times & dates, because the EasyJet system has passed these details directly over to Europcar. Before now, when booking separately, I’ve had to double and triple check that I’ve got the dates & times correct in case we turn up and have no car to drive
2. It appears to be cheaper than booking separately
3. All costs under one roof. (Ok ok – there were 3 reasons)

All in all, this really helps take the worry out of booking a hire car – and no doubt provides a fee-income for EasyJet. Nice little earner, and a good customer experience.

Lastly, then, the basket is updated to reflect all additions and changes, and provides a nice breakdown of costs (and alternative costs depending on payment type):

The last stages of the journey are all to do with credit card payments and whilst very well done, were – frankly - boring. So instead, let’s look at the confirmation email EasyJet sent me.

Email confirmation

The email contains all the info you need, including cost confirmation, booking reference, a list of the various things that were purchased, and some ok-ish cross-sell messages (the parking one is stupidly big, in my opinion):

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The screenshot is spoilt by the fact that I’ve had to blur out some key details (otherwise it’s pants-stealing time), but the key messages are there.

The  issue I have with this is the text size: something’s gone awry with it, and it’s TINY in some areas. This isn’t a showstopper, but kinda defeats the object of instilling confidence (and, incidentally, being readable). Similarly, I know how tricky email marketing can be, purely because of the number of email clients & services.

Conclusion

A great effort by EasyJet, marred only slightly by the email foibles. Otherwise, I’d recommend it to anyone (and indeed I have done already). The power of a great customer journey in action!

Tags: design, easyjet, review, usability