Mobile’s been growing substantially in the last few years, and businesses are seeing consumers visiting their websites from mobile devices more than ever before. “Are you sure?”, we hear you ask. Well frankly, yes we are. But here’s the proof anyway.
Last November Google reported that within a typical online travel purchase path, a user would conduct 38 different web searches, watch five videos, visit 380 websites. In total this makes up 419 digital moments over a period of 60 days, 87 per cent of which takes place on a mobile device. Impressive, right? If you’re not convinced yet then here’s another example. Emarketer also shared a study last November, predicting that in 2016 we can expect more than three quarters of online searches for travel, and more than 51 per cent of revenues, to come from mobile devices. The question you’re probably asking now is “why isn’t it working for me?”.
Well, don’t worry, because we probably have the answer to that too. The most obvious being – is your website mobile-optimised? If it isn’t, then hands down that’s the reason. If a user is trying to make a booking on a website that’s tricky to use on their mobile device, then you can be sure that they’ll give up before they’ve even made the booking. This means that you’re literally giving customers to your competitors. As well as this, from April last year Google started penalising websites for not being mobile-optimised.
So if your website isn’t then you’ll find it scoring much lower in Google rankings than it was previously. With so many people using mobile to surf the web, you need to be sure that you’re keeping up with the trend. If you do have a mobile website, are you sure that it has a responsive web design? If it doesn’t, then slow loading times could be your issue.
According to Radware, 76 per cent of the travel industry’s top websites were considered too slow to load, which caused frustration among users and site abandonment. With this in mind, the 2015 Jumio Mobile Consumer Insights Study showed that the number one reason for site abandonment is actually slow loading times. When looking at abandonment rates per industry, travel comes in as third worst at 38 per cent, right after fashion (53 per cent) and food and drinks (39 per cent). Once you’ve got your website working for mobile and at an acceptable speed, you really need to think about the booking process.
Yes, some questions are a necessity for regulatory purposes, and there’s others that you’d like so that you can undertake market research, but don’t get too overbearing. If a customer sees that they have to input reams of information, then they’re much more likely to abandon the process. You can always ask for additional information at a later date or in a different way. The important thing is to get the booking complete. These few tips should boost your mobile bookings and really let you see the benefits that mobile offers to business.
