Ryanair lands in last place for eCommerce

30-11-2007

by Emmet Ryan

Ryanair has come bottom of an online Irish shopping survey, despite being named one of the most efficient airlines in Europe by the Association of European Airlines.

On Friday, the airline topped the European organisation's newly released league table, which assessed airlines based on punctuality and the number of bags lost. Despite this good performance in Europe, Ryanair's website, Ryanair.com, finished in last place in a separate survey of consumer practices at 25 online firms by Irish internet consultancy firm AMAS.

"Ryanair fell down on several points of good practice," Fiachra O Marcaigh, director of AMAS, told ENN. "It's very difficult to avoid paying for extras as consumers have to opt out repeatedly. It takes a very determined effort for a web-savvy user to book a flight without any additional charges."

The consultancy firm measured 25 shopping websites aimed at the Irish market and found that only mobile firm Meteor received top marks. Buy4Now, Dell and Tesco came in joint second place, but O Marcaigh said all the firms surveyed needed to raise their game in order to meet consumer needs.

"They need to put more secure connections in place and present more visible privacy policies," he said. The survey found that many of the websites required visitors to opt out of extras such as email newsletters. "Consumers will be more loyal readers of newsletters if they opt in rather than if firms try to sneak it into their inbox," he added.

The study of online shopping sites was part of the firm's quarterly 'State of the Net' review. The study used data from sources such as the Central Statistics Office and ComReg to analyse how Ireland performed in several fields compared to its international counterparts.

Among the more interesting results, the survey cited ComReg's finding that Irish mobile users continue to pay more than subscribers in any other EU country, with average revenue per user (ARPU) of EUR44.07. This is well ahead of both second-placed Belgium, where ARPU is EUR34.88, and the EU average of EUR29.40.

Another notable finding came in the broadband statistics, which showed that population density was not a particularly relevant factor across Europe when it came to broadband penetration. "Ireland is still lagging behind and the common claim from broadband providers is that it is difficult to reach certain parts of the country, yet countries like Norway, Finland and Iceland -- which all have much lower population density -- have far higher broadband penetration," said O Marcaigh.