Ryanair and Conversion Rate Deconstructing

This year we are not flying Ryanair, even if it was cheaper to fly with them. I left the buying process on their website at one particular place without finishing the process.

Everybody who works in e-commerce deals with the same problem: lots of visitors start your on-line buying process, but a lot of these visits don't end with a completed sale. We spend a lot of time and energy trying to optimize this buying funnel to get more people to finish their sale. It often comes down to a specific step.

The last time I tried to buy our flights on ryanair.com, I knew exactly when I decided not to finish the buying process and buy somewhere else. So I'm writing this post for the guy responsible for Conversion Optimization for the ryanair website: this is the step where it went wrong.

When I wanted to add pieces of luggage to my flight, I saw a combo indicating 2 options. I didn't look too careful (nobody reads on the web, we all just scan), so I thought I had the following 2 options:

1 piece: 50€
2 pieces: 70€ 


This sounded OK: the second piece came with a discount

Of course I wasn't thinking clearly, this is nothing like Ryanair. So I looked again and saw what it realy was:

1 piece of 15 kg: 50€
1 piece of 20 kg: 70€

Say what?


So this combo summed up the whole Ryanair experience: I already saw how I would be checked and re-checked and then be asked by some unpolite and unhelpful groundstaf to pay more, just because I came with 20,9 kg. So no humiliation for us this year: we paid more with another airline and get spared the Ryanair-way.

Infographic: Email Marketing

In 2012, I was happy to be part in the creation of the following infografic on Email Marketing.


Created by Ventura24 and Internet República

My films in 2012

Here are the films I've seen in 2012

January
Shutter Island by Scorcese (2010)
There will be Blood by Paul Thomas Anderson (2007)
An Education by Lone Scherfig (2009)
A Single Man by Tom Ford (2009)
La Môme by Olivier Dahan (2007)
Days of Heaven by Terrence Mallick (1978)

February
Moneyball by Bennet Miller (2011)
Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen (2011)

March:
Red Lights by Rodrigo Cortés (2012)
Les Triplettes de Belleville by Sylvain Chomet (2003)
Hugo by Martin Scorsese (2011)
Die Fälsher by Stefan Ruzowitzky (2007)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Stephen Daldry (2011)
The Departed by Martin Scorsese (2006)

April
Hodejegerne by Morten Tyldum (2011)
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol by Brad Bird (2011)
Good Will Hunting by Gus Van Sant (1997)

May
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by Tomas Alfredson (2011)
The Avangers by Joss Whedon (2012)
Dark Shadows by Tim Burton (2012)

July
Transformers by Michael Bay (2007)
Batman - the Dark Knight Rises by Christopher Nolan (2012)
The Breakfast Club by John Hughes (1985)
Rundskop by Michael R. Roskam (2011)

August
Alien by Ridley Scott (1979)
Aliens by James Cameron (1984)
Prometheus by Ridley Scott (2012)

October:
Lo Imposible by Juan Antonio Bayona (2012)
The Terminator by James Cameron (1984)
The Cabin in the Woods by Drew Goddard (2011)

November:
Looper by Rian Johnson (2012)
Never Let Me Go by Mark Romanek (2010)
The Game by David Fincher (1997)
Jerichow by Christian petzold (2006)
Skyfall by Sam Mendes (2012)
Capote by Bennett Miller (2005)
De Rouille et d'Os by Jacques Audiard (2012)

December:
Soul Kitchen by Fatih Akin (2009)
Limitless by Neil Burger (2011)
End of Watch by David Ayer (2012)
Amour by Michaël Hanneke (2012)
The Hobbit by Peter Jackson (2012)
No Country for old men by Joel and Ethan Coen (2007)
The Life of Pi by Ang Li (2012)

My 2012 Spotify list: never too much of a good thing

To keep it simple: 2012 was a brilliant year for music, full of new discoveries for me and with too little time to listen to everything worth listening to. The first few months of 2012 were just OK, but once Alt-J launched their album, the avalanche of high standard music kept coming and coming. No need to stop just yet.

Best Album 2012:
Fragrant World by Yeasayer

Best Song 2012:
Sometimes I Forget You've Gone by Dirty Three

Here is my list of 2012: like every year a combination of best albums (Alt-J until Two Gallants) and a mix of favourite songs. You can listen to my list of 2012 on Spotify over here: Lista 2012 Stefvanef

Apart from Yeasayers, great albums came from Kendrick Lamar (who said there is no variance in rap?), Alt-J (what a debut), Peter Broderick (subtle, perfect pop transformed into an internet address), Bill Fay (Respect for such a comeback), John Talabot (perfect summer album: volume at 10 and wind blowing through the curtains on a hot afternoon), Actress (best electro/beats/noise since Burial) and Two Gallants (hurray for the twisted guitar-bridges in their songs).

Two Gallants, The XX and Azealia Banks got extra points for some really good concerts in 2012, which helps to get in the list.

Florence is in the list since I got so disappointed by "Ceremonials" in 2011. In 2012 she came back strong with her Unplugged. Glad to have her back.

A lot of stuff  like Mala, Nick Waterhouse, Django Django, Soulsavers and Dylan, didn't make the list because there was some much else of high quality. Still happy to listen to you guys.

Deception of 2012 The Ting Tings, no discussion there.

My books in 2012

Should have read more in 2012, I know. But I blame Coursera: I was reading quite a bit up until I enrolled into 2 Coursera courses and haven't picked up since I finished. I've enrolled on more courses for 2013, so maybe this list won't exist next year, let's see.

Poor Economics was the most amazing read of this year. It challenges what we all think about poverty and how it can be beaten.

This is what I've read:

Freedom by Jonathan Frazen (2010)
Scorecasting by Tobais J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim (2011)
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)
You are not so Smart by David McRaney (2011)
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (2011)
Poor Economics by Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and Esther Duflo (2011)
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

Extreme email retargeting in Spain: Seguros.es

The email you can see below has been the most extreme version of retargeting I've seen until now. It's in Spanish, I'm sorry. But don't worry, I'll translate. This is how it goes:

Dear user,
2 years ago you compared quotes for a car insurance on Seguros.es. We remind you that in a 2 weeks, your car insurance for your Toyota Auris will expire and you will have to renew your policy.

Click image to enlarge

Really?

Seguros.es targets me for something I did on their site 2 years ago? That's some heavy stuff - 2 years in the online world seem like various lightyears away.

I can't say that it's bad. First of all: it's true. I did compare quotes for an insurance 2 years ago for the car mentioned. Though it wasn't for my actual car. I don't even have a car. So the part of 'in 2 weeks your insurance will expire' isn't correct. I remember that for the devellopment of new site, I made some trials on insurance sites, that's all.
Second reason why it's not bad: even if Seguros.es might not sure if I have to renew my insurance, it's a good try. It might have been true and they're message doesn't put them in any bad light, even if it's not.

Retargeting in emails is actually good practice: if you, as a company, can send a specific message to a specific group of customers, as a rule, results tend to be better. Here's another example of Amazon:  I looked for a new telephone. Since I didn't buy the phone, Amazon reminded me a couple of days later, suggesting me also some other phones.

Click on the image to enlarge

Email Search Optimization (ESO)

A friend of mine was pretty honest when giving me feedback on the emails my company sends him:

"I never read or open your company's emails."

It didn't sound like my friend wasn't interested in what my company had to say. He also didn't seem to be fed up with too much email or advertising from a company. He just said it as a matter of fact.

He continued:

"I do know that I have those emails somewhere in my inbox. And when I need to buy your product I find that email and I make my on-line order from your email onwards."

Now here's a way I hadn't looked at email marketing: Some customers just keep the emails in their inbox, un-opened, for when they want to buy something from you and they can find you.

I have always looked at email marketing as the company reaching out to the customer to try and pull him back to your site. With emails to customers, the company is in control: the company defines when to send, how many times they send, what products to include, if our clients are worthy of a promotion, etc, etc. We see the client as the passive receiver of the email, and he can do what the company wants (open the email, read the email and buy) or ignore your communications (which about 90% of your clients tend to do with your emails).

Now my friend was telling me a complete new way of looking at email: the client is now in control, and he doesn't want to follow the company's lead. He opens the email when he wants, he doesn't give a damn about how great your products, promotions or designs are. He just uses the email as a way to come to your site and to buy what he already knew he was going to buy. It's very similar to a bookmark: people keep preferred links to pages as a bookmark to come back to that page pretty quick.

It explains various things I've noticed over the last couple of years:

• Outcomes of emails are sometimes very unpredictable: your email can focus on one product, or give the customer a specific promotion. But chances are that they just go on and buy what they were already going to buy and don't bother with your great design or splendid campaign.
• I've seen people open their Christmas email in May and actually buy something, although the products announced in the email weren't available anymore.
• In some cases I've noticed that more then 50% of the clicks on the email sent are on the header-logo: clients don't even bother to read or scan your content, they just open the email, click and move on from there.
• A lot of what I wrote last week about the importance of transactional emails can be explained by this.
• I've also seen that sending more emails can increase your sales of customers coming from emails, but it usually takes away sales from clients coming from other sources.

All this does put email better in perspective: your client is not a passive number in your data base that will jump up and do whatever you want them to do when you send them an email.

Email Search Optimization?

This also opens a new discussion of email-findability. Companies think that clients who already know what they want, search for your brand on Google. That's why company's spend so much time and effort of appearing on the first results in search.

But maybe we have to start thinking about how easy it is to be findable in the inbox of your customers. Everybody now has a spam-email where all the campaign emails enter. Your email will probably end there together with literally thousands of other emails. To be found there when your client is ready to use the email to find your site might require a different approach then sending your daily 'best offers' email. Maybe it's time to start a new sort of internet marketing. Email Search Optimization.