EasyJet sees sales of online extras soar

WebTrends has helped easyJet to lift some conversion rates for ancillary products increase by nearly 40%, the analytics company claimed this week. The pair have been working together for 18 months. WebTrends brief covers 24 easyjet.com sites around Europe. Conrad Bennett, senior director of technical services EMEA for Web Trends, said that easyJet Knew about …

WebTrends has helped easyJet to lift some conversion rates for ancillary products increase by nearly 40%, the analytics company claimed this week.

The pair have been working together for 18 months. WebTrends brief covers 24 easyjet.com sites around Europe.

Conrad Bennett, senior director of technical services EMEA for Web Trends, said that easyJet Knew about  visitors to the site, but needed different analytics to optimise conversion rates, particularly for ancillary products.

The pair also recognised that the booking funnel – from flight search to confirm payment – was fairly well established for airlines, and that improvements needed to be made within each stage of the process.  “easyJet recognised that flexibility could also lead to confusion,” he said.

WebTrends revealed that “tweaks and testing over time” after the ancillaries on one page had led to improved conversion,  “specifically a 38% increase in the take up of the car rental offering”.  He also said that they discovered a different conversion rate when prices for UK passengers were displayed as “GBP” or using the pound sign.

Bennett explained another local issue with easyJet – the airline has a strong brand, re- inforced by the use of the colour orange. This limited colour palette created design and conversion issues. “On its older sites there was a lot of orange on screen, which made it difficult to get things to stand out. But since we started using blue to highlight special offers, we’re seeing good traffic.”

It was also keen to avoid cluttering up the booking funnel with banner ads. “They can be a distraction,” Bennett said.

In terms of web analytics generally, Bennett said that WebTrends had seen a shift over the past few years. “Initially what we did was a bit insular and niche, not connected to the overall business. But we’re starting to get buy-in at a senior management level, which means that the internal resources are being made available for businesses to act on the data provided.”

Boardroom backing has also been helped by the sectors ability to produce specific reports for specific teams and/or markets. “A standard report doesn’t cut it any more,” he said.

 “Integration” of analytics into online campaigns has become a key requirement from all this year, Bennett added, with behaviourial targeting and personalization increasingly important. Its work with easyJet has recently expanded to look at WebTrends campaign management tools.

Bennett acknowledged that we are still in “the early days in web analysis” and that change is a constant. “What works today won’t necessarily work next week,” he suggested.