1. Ryanair crash lands in online shopping survey

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Aileen O’Toole,
Managing Director, AMAS

Two of Ireland’s best-known brands – Ryanair and Peats -- came last in an AMAS survey of Irish online shopping. Only one brand, Meteor, scored a full ten out of ten, with three online shopping giants, Buy4Now, Dell and Tesco, close behind on nine. The survey aimed to establish if leading Irish eCommerce sites meet ten points of good practice.

Irish consumers are likely to spend record sums online this Christmas. Year-on-year the statistics show more Irish people being converted to online shopping and that travel and tickets are the top online categories.

The AMAS research checked 25 of the major eCommerce sites for key points of good practice in eCommerce, such as:

• Not requiring customers to opt-out of additional charges or marketing sign-ups
• Using secure connections to collect credit card details
• Making privacy policies and terms and conditions obvious where they matter most
• Protecting themselves against pricing errors
• Providing simple, clear check-out processes

None of these checkpoints is new, or very demanding on site owners. It would be reasonable to expect all leading eCommerce sites to score eight or more. But the great majority dropped at least two points.

One of the most common failures was the opt-out issue. Nine sites required some opt-out behaviour. Ryanair’s infamous travel insurance / check baggage / priority boarding could require multiple opt-outs to avoid charges.

Sixteen sites did not display privacy policies prominently, either at the point where personal information is collected or by requiring an acceptance click during registration. On terms and conditions, the outcome was better, with many more sites making them clear and very few leaving them out.

Simplicity and transparency are important elements of driving online revenues. But many Irish websites need to do more to improve consumers’ online shopping experiences.

For more details on the survey and the methodology, visit www.amas.ie

Source: CSO, Information Society & Telecommunications 2006 CSO, Information Society Statistics, Ireland 2003

Back to contents of State of the Net issue 7