It’s all very well getting a mobile specific website, but how do your customers find it?

That was the question posed by Mobile Commerce CEO Steve Page who demonstrated to a WTM audience at EyeforTravel’s Mobile Technology in Travel seminar just how difficult Google made it to access British Airways’ mobile website.

Doing a live Google search for BA on his phone, he showed how BA’s regular site came up, which had poor useability for mobile users, and how its mobile site was actually listed lower than Bmi’s site.

Page said: “The problem, once you have managed to get yourself a site geared to mobiles, is getting your site discovered.

"We know that web users on mobiles tend to use a search tool like Google or Yahoo to find what they want rather than going direct to the website they need so it’s incredibly important that people are properly directed to your site once they have searched.

"Right now that’s not happening.”

Currently there are 40 million searches made per month on mobile handsets in the UK.

by Dinah Hatch