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Ryanair website

The Ryanair website has evolved into a rather complex beast. This webpage looks at how it evolved from a relatively simple design in 2000 to what it is today. Much thanks to the Internet wayback machine, without which this study would not have been possible.

Before the beginning there was a parked domain

Ryanair was something of a latecomer to the internet. Whilst the Ryanair.com website was registered on the 12th Jul 1996, the domain was parked by NetNames (one of the early specialist domain name companies) until 2000:

Ryanair launches its website

In March 2000 Ryanair launched its website with a 15 pounds off special (from the beginning they excluded airport taxes from the equation). The website offered internet support (at a price of course - this is Ryanair we're talking about - 58 pence per minute for telephonic support).

Mad May giveaways

In May 2000 Ryanair launched their "Mad May giveaways". Now they'd split theirsite into 4 columns.

Hot fares for June 2000 In what was possibly a with-it thing to do at the time; in June 2000 Ryanair's innovation was a burning flame above the 9 pound figure to advertise their "Hot Fares for June".

August 2000 : Make the site multilingual

In August 2000 Ryanair added Deutsch, Svenska, Italiano and Francais. In addition, they added an extra hotel advert (see the bottom left). It's worth noting that at this stage Ryanair stil didn't have their booking engine on the front page of their website.

May 2002 : Yellow + advertising

By May 2002 Ryanair had changed the colour coding of their website to add in some yellow. They'd done away with the cute Ryanair plane with its shades on. The site still did not have a booking engine on the front page, but by this stage Ryanair had added car rentals (Hertz), travel insurance and mortgages to the hotel sales on their site. They also did away with the flags next to the languages, and had added in Castellano, Dansk and Dutch.

By the end of May 2002 Ryanair had added an offering of Car Life and Home Insurance to their website, competitions to win free tickets to the Austrian Grand Prix, the booking of skiing chalets at Just Chalets (and of course were charging an extra 15 pounds for transporting skiis or snowboards on their planes) and were showcasing the punctuality of their flights. They advertised that for the week ending 24 March 2002, 82% of their flights were on time and 95% of their flights were within an hour of being on time.

 

 

July 2002 : Photo ID

In July 2002 Ryanair added a warning about all passengers needing to bring photo IDs with them, and that

September 2002

Ryanair added an advert on their website, advertising "free phone calls", "one million pound giveaway".

March 2003

Ryanair website was made available in Catalan and Finnish.

Ryanair 70% cheaper than easyJet

Up to April 2003, the title of the Ryanair site had been "Ryanair.com - The Low Fares Airline". In May 2003 they changed the title for the first time, to "Ryanair.com - 70% cheaper than easyJet".

50% cheaper than easyJet

By December 2003 the title of the Ryanair website had been changed to "Ryanair.com - The Low Fares Airline - 50% cheaper than easyJet". Ryanair were now selling Ryanair Christmas gift vouchers and advertising Hostel beds on their website.

Russian and Latvian

By August 2004, Ryanair had added into their website Russian and Latvian.

Portuguese

By October the site had added in Portuguese.

The Low Fares Airline

In February 2005 the title of the site was changed back to "Ryanair.com - The Low Fares Airline" (dropping the piece about being 50% cheaper than easyJet).

Booking engine to the front page

In March 2005 the Ryanair website was completely revamped. A flight bookings engine was placed on the front left of the homepage, and the colour scheme was changed to a brighter yellow and lighter blue. The title of the homepage was changed to "Ryanair.com - FLY CHEAPER". The languages were no longer written out at the top of the screen, but the flag icons were reverted to.

Cheap flights, Car hire, Hotels and Travel Insurance

The title of Ryanair's homepage was changed to "Ryanair.com - FLY CHEAPER - Cheap flights, Car hire, Hotels and Travel Insurance". The first time the title of the site had mentioned anything other than flights.

CHEAP FLIGHTS - Fly Cheaper

In March 2006, Ryanair made a subtle change to the title of the homepage of their website - "Ryanair.com - CHEAP FLIGHTS - Fly Cheaper, Car Hire, Hotels, Travel Insurance".

It's hip to be square

In October 2006, the blocks were changed from rounded corners to square corners, and the lines from rounded lines to straight lines.

Drawing attention

This snapshot was taken at the end of November 2006. Notice how Ryanair use lights above the "GIFT VOUCHERS" tab to draw attention to it:

Drop-down list for countries

By April 2007 a drop-down list had been added for different languages.

The lowest fares guaranteed

In July 2007 the title of the homepage was changed again, this time to: "Ryanair.com - The lowest fares guaranteed - cheap flights, fly cheaper"

Book your cheap flight

At the end of February 2008 the Ryanair site was down for a weekend, to carry out some major changes. The title of the site was changed to "Ryanair.com - Book your cheap flight, hotels, car rental with ryanair.com". Ryanair had also reverted back to a rounded frame for the tabs:

Registrant and contacts for Ryanair.com

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