Atmosphere Research Group: Three Key Elements to Optimizing the Mobile Booking Process

One of the most thought-provoking statistics from our mobile commerce infographic we published last week was mentioned in a comment by Pankaj Gabba: “80% of consumers will close a mobile site if it offers a terrible user experience.”

Many mobile applications (hereinafter referred to as “APPs”) are not APPs at all, they are just simple copies of web pages. Other APPs are not much better, they lack attention to user experience and do not have a clear goal - to make consumers buy.

In a recent blog post, Jeffrey Breen of Atmosphere Research Group (Atmosphere) outlined “Three Key Factors for Optimizing the Mobile Booking Experience,” delving into how apps can move from being a “flagship” to a significant profit center for OTAs and other travel companies.

To frame this discussion, it’s worth highlighting Atmosphere’s survey results, which showed that among U.S. leisure travelers who use smartphones, 37% are interested in using their phones to book hotels, 37% are interested in using their phones to book flights, and 34% are interested in using their phones to book car rentals.

In addition to booking travel products, 49% of respondents want to use their mobile phones to book restaurant seats or entertainment venue tickets; 46% of respondents will use their mobile phones to check in at a hotel or board a flight; and 35% of respondents will use the device to book sightseeing tours.

This information (as shown in the chart below) clearly reflects that travelers are very interested in using their mobile phones to complete traditional web-based transactions.

Now let’s analyze another interesting data from the above infographic: Among consumers who use mobile phones to make purchases, 34% of respondents have an annual income of $100,000 or more. Would these 34% of consumers be interested in using mobile phones to book high-value travel products?

There is no data to prove this hypothesis, but Orbitz recently redesigned its iPhone app, and this case study may provide inspiration for other companies. The OTA found that the number of users browsing products on mobile devices doubled in May 2012 compared with the previous year, reaching 6 million.

So what does Orbitz do well?

Breen believes that there are three key concepts to creating an optimized mobile experience. Below we extract three specific features from "optimized mobile experience" that can constitute a world-class mobile user experience:

1. Fluency

The screen size is small, the keyboard size is even smaller, so why should you force users to click again and again every time they want to make a reservation?

The most appealing mobile experience is not much different from the online booking experience, with account information pre-filled and TSA details and credit card data saved for later use.

When travel companies already store customers' credit card information online, they should never ask customers to enter their complete credit card information, including card number, expiration date, billing address, etc.

Travel companies can ask customers to fill in credit card verification codes, but if it turns out that the technology cannot connect to the server in a secure environment, consumers will feel uneasy. This will lead to insecurity and loss of trust, and they will think that all information is not safe.

2. Intelligence

Travel companies must use all available data, especially location information from mobile apps. If a user has just booked a flight to Hawaii in three months, they definitely don’t want to check which hotels in Philadelphia have rooms available tonight.

If travel companies can successfully leverage data, they can benefit, and the user experience should be intelligent and flexible. By leveraging data from mobile and online channels, as well as historical booking information across platforms, travel companies can provide a smooth, mobile-optimized interface, which is exactly what users are looking for.

3. Intuitive

It’s impossible for OTAs and other travel companies to create a simple and intuitive user experience if their technology and business teams work in silos.

Lack of communication and collaboration between technical and business teams can lead to travel companies not understanding consumer needs, resulting in the creation of user experiences that hinder the achievement of the target outcome (travel bookings).

By integrating teams from different departments into a larger “mobile department”, travel companies can more effectively build mobile tools that not only reflect their core capabilities but also meet consumer needs. This lays the foundation for companies to build successful businesses through mobile devices.

Summarize

What can travel companies learn? If you plan to use the mobile channel, you should not only optimize your website, but also create a completely mobile-centric user experience that reduces factors that cause consumer frustration and simplifies the purchase process.

You allow users to buy when and how they want, and provide products that meet their needs. It's very simple, and it's clearly worked very well for large companies like Orbitz.

via: traveldaily