✏️ The Battle of the Budget Airlines

Loss aversion. Price anchoring. Decoys. Bastards.

A couple of weeks ago I took a quick trip to Prague. And because I booked two separate flights I had the joy of navigating through both easyJet’s sales funnel and Ryanair’s.

Despite a frustrating evening it gave me the insights to compare the two. And despite lots of similarities, one brand comes out on top for the agressiveness of their sales strategy (no prizes for guessing which).

So today we’re going to breakdown the strategies used by Britain’s two leading budget airlines to squeeze every penny out of your trip.

Enjoy,
— Robbie

Once you’ve inputted your destination and flight dates, you’re directed to one of the screenshots below; easyJet on the left and Ryanair on the right. And they both work very similarly with just a few nuanced differences.

Price Anchoring: this is a behavioural psychology strategy whereby a much higher price is displayed to anchor your expectations. The lower price offered to you subsequently seems of better value. Most companies do this. Pretty normal.

Ryanair are more extreme in their delivery of price anchoring. They offer five options (vs. three with easyJet) and they further discount the rate when you select it.

Social Proof & Scarcity: this is another behavioural psychology strategy where you combine the human desire to follow the crowd (social proof) alongside our fear of missing out (scarcity).

Notice how both companies use specific numbers. They don’t say “nearly sold out” or “other people are also looking”. That doesn’t mean anything to us. Specific numbers make it real and tangible.

And they both deliver their message in a way that navigates legal disputes and false advertising. Ryanair don’t say “5 seats left on the plane” because that’s falsifiable. But “5 seats left at this price” is under their control.

And we know this is a marketing gimmick. Your rational brain questions whether the numbers are real or just randomly generated but your emotional brain says buy it now just in case.

The design architecture of these sales funnels is really interesting. Once you’ve selected your flight, you are asked to choose your bundle.

This is a way for them to package up the next sections of the funnel in an easy-to-click option for you. What you are actually choosing is a pre-packaged bundle of all the sections you will have to go through one at a time if you don’t select one.

We’ll start with easyJet.

Four-Column Decoy: easyJet use a four-column structure to give you the illusion that you’re making an unbiased choice. But when you look closely you’ll notice the “Smart+” option was always the target.

Pricing Display: the research on displaying price is overwhelmingly in favour of showing the smallest possible number. Notice how easyJet show you the price per person, per flight. Suddenly £42.98 becomes almost £200 for a couple.

Moving on to Ryanair you’ll notice a lot of similarities. They opted for a similar style with a three-column decoy. Notice how the second most expensive option is the one they’re really guiding you towards. And they’re even more extreme with the price increase from PLUS to FLEXI PLUS.

This is another example of price anchoring. All of a sudden PLUS doesn’t feel like £36 more. It feels like £50+ cheaper than the most expensive version.

Authority Bias: Ryanair take the recommendation one step further than easyJet and use pseudo-personalisation to make you feel like they’ve considered your journey and your needs: “Ideal for your trip to Prague”. It’s ideal. Meaning that any lesser-option would involve some kind of sacrifice on my behalf.

And they follow it up with a feature-as-a-benefit (the check-in bag). This allows us to buy with our emotions and later justify with logic. They’ve reduced the cognitive load. I no longer have to think of the logical reason why I purchased it.

Popup: the image on the right is known as an exit pop-up. When you leave the previous section without making an additional selection, they try and reel you back in. And they do so using loss aversion.

Notice how the language changes: it’s no longer about what you can gain, it’s about what you will lose if you continue. It’s intentionally designed to make you think you’re making a mistake.

After deciding to opt-out of the bundle selection, both brands now take you through the seat selection phase of the funnel. And they really want you to book a seat.

Reassurance: sales funnels are designed to be one way–the objective is to move the prospect from start to finish without losing them or sending them back. In the top left you’ll notice a reminder of the flight origin and destination, and the dates you’re looking at. This is easy to overlook but it’s smart.

It’s a reassurance tactic. You don’t have that sudden fear that you’re booking the wrong thing and navigate all the way back through the funnel. EasyJet make it seamless to keep you trapped in the process.

As before, easyJet use loss aversion to show you what you’re missing. And this section reads like a very subtle threat: “we’ll automatically allocate your seat”. Makes it sound almost like it’s out of their control.

Price Anchoring: the first option for a seat is the most expensive which intentionally anchors the price in your mind. All of a sudden, £7.49 looks like a bargain. It’s not £7.49 more, it’s 3x cheaper than the other option.

And notice how Standard has two green bullet points the same as Extra Legroom. It’s not made to look worse despite being cheaper. They’re nudging you to the Standard option (and you’ll think it was your decision all along).

But this is gentle compared to Ryanair who really turn up the heat in this section. We’re faced with a landing page with no clear way out and a double pop-up.

Ryanair do a marvellous job in this section of empowering you to make a decision. You don’t select a seat, you sit where you want. And the counter option is presented as ‘Select seats later’ which subtly implies that you will have to make a decision at some point (which of course, you don’t).

It also makes you feel irresponsible or that the process will remain unresolved until you make a decision. And if you have to make one anyway, you may as well decide now.

Endowment Effect: this is another behavioural psychology principle that suggests we place higher value on things we own than things we don’t. Ryanair use this expertly in already selecting a recommended seat for you. You’re no longer somebody who didn’t pick a seat. You’re somebody who had a seat (14D) and lost it.

The endowment effect works two-fold in this scenario as it’s also been pre-selected for us. It takes cognitive effort to change. The easiest option from here is to just accept it.

Tone of Voice (TOV): the first screenshot shows a very friendly and unprofessional tone of voice. The seat selections are named as benefits: Get off quick and Stretch out for less. This changed the second you navigate past this page.

Suddenly you’re hit with please be advised. It’s professional and formal. It reads like a warning. And it’s followed up with a trio of loss aversion punches: social discomfort, scarcity, and financial loss.

Button Asymmetry: the buttons throughout the sales funnel are flipped in both their positioning and their design. We naturally expect the highlighted button on the right to take us to the next stage and the unhighlighted on the left to navigate back a stage. These are flipped.

You have to make a conscious effort to continually avoid paying extra at every stage of the journey. There is nothing intuitive about the process. They’ve added friction.

You’re close to the end now. You’re fatigued and you’ve managed to get through without booking a bundle or a seat. But now it comes down to baggage. And it’s more of the same I’m afraid.

This section is fairly tame in comparison.

EasyJet have flipped from loss aversion to savings. Adding a hold bag is no longer an expense, it’s a 15% discount on what you will have to pay later.

And they use a slightly different pricing structure as well. The first option is made to seem such poor value it’s not worth considering. They don’t mind which of the two options you pick here: 23kg is the best price and 26kg is the best value for your trip. The only option which sucks is the 15kg hold bag.

Unconventional CTA: notice the call-to-action (CTA) is situated in the top right. Very unconventional. And it’s designed to look more like a navigation link than a button. It’s so frustrating you almost want to pick a bag to move on…almost.

But it’s certainly easier to navigate than Ryanair’s baggage selection.

Sequential Upsell: Ryanair turns one selection (a bag) into a sequential upsell with multiple options. You now have to select your cabin bags and your check-in bags. And that also means double opting out if you don’t want either upgrade.

They further up the stakes with the mandatory selection note. So regardless of the outcome you have to actively make a decision. You can’t skip the section.

And just for good measure, they throw some more loss aversion tactics at you. They use the hazard warning sign and make it very clear you will be charged and it will be at the gate; when you’re in public, you’re stressed, and it’s too late to do anything about it.

Before we wrap up there’s one final point I want to make.

Both easyJet and Ryanair have designed these sales funnels with one clear intention: to get you to upgrade elements of your flight so they can make more money. But not once do they use the word upgrade. Because an upgrade is optional and an expense. The second you view these options as upgrades they’ve lost you.

TL;DR

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