6 Best Practice Tips for Mobile Sites (Do it with Vizlly)

The majority of consumers use smartphones for everything from checking an email to buying movie tickets to booking their next trip. 

Regardless of your property's target market, having a website that is optimized for mobile is crucial. Are you reaching mobile users with a properly optimized site?

Here are the top 6 Best Practice Tips for mobile sites:

1. Think About Interface and Screen Size

It’s important to keep in mind that most smartphones are touchscreen devices, where the user’s fingertip is the primary input device. Make sure that the items on your mobile optimized website are easily tap-able, allow swiping to move through tabs or photos, offer drop downs for selection and include “previous” and “next” buttons to help guide users through the booking process.

2. Add Eye-Pleasing Visuals

Visual content is processed in the brain 60,000 times faster than text, proving the importance of engaging travel shoppers with quality visual content. With the high-resolution available on smartphone screens, you can tell your unique story to mobile website visitors with videos, virtual tours, and photos.

3. Make Booking Easy

Both leisure and business travelers are more than twice as likely to book via a mobile site than through a mobile app, but a bad mobile website is the number one deterrent to mobile booking. With mobile booking projected to exceed $8 billion this year, it’s easy to see that Smartphone and tablet users are ready to book when they are browsing your site (PhoCusWright).

4. Take Advantage of the Mobile Platform

With all of the advances in Smartphone technology, travel shoppers are now walking around with powerful multi-functional devices in their pockets every day, so it makes sense for your mobile-optimized website to take advantage of those advanced functions as much as possible.

5. Make your Mobile Site Social-Friendly

With 92% of consumers trusting earned media like social media posts and reviews above all other forms of advertising, it’s important that your mobile website features links that encourage visitors to share their travel plans and amplify your hotel story for you. Word-of-mouth marketing is alive and thriving, and has accelerated in the 21^st century with the adoption of social media among the masses. 

6. Display Redeemable Special Offers

Everyone loves a good deal – and mobile shoppers are no different. The number of smartphone mobile coupon users in the U.S. rose from 58.1 million users in 2014 to 74.1 million in 2015 with tablet coupon users increasing from 60.5 to 68.7 million. Promote value-added special offers on smartphones and tablets that grab consumer interest and encourage booking.

With the growth in mobile internet usage outpacing previous technologies like radio, TV, PC and social media, hospitality professionals have an unprecedented opportunity to engage with potential customers and drive more bookings. Use these 6 tips to connect with travel shoppers “on the go”. 

You can do all of this with Vizlly! Check out this video to learn how to create a mobile optimized website with Vizlly that fulfills all of these best practice tips.