Guest column on how best to use growing trend of mobile devices

Guest column: Your Customers Have Gone Mobile …. Are You Going With Them?

By Scott Schwarzhoff

The world is going mobile, as evidenced by the proliferation of apps and devices, and in the travel industry, mobile has become an ideal channel and important touchpoint for brands to interact with customers. According to Forrester, more than one-third of US online leisure travelers and 55 percent of business travelers use smartphones while they’re on the road. Travel companies are looking to engage the mobile consumer by  harnessing key features of smartphones – like GPS and cameras – as well as tablets’ unique touch and large screen, to build a new crop of apps that change how travelers research and book hotels, transportation, and points of interest.

Where does a company start in mobile?  It can be overwhelming … deciding which devices to create apps for (iOS vs. Android vs. RIM, etc.), learning new mobile coding languages (Objective for Apple, Java for Android, etc.), long testing cycles, considerable costs and time to market, etc.

In addition, a whopping 80% of mobile apps are used only once … then abandoned. How does a travel company ensure optimum results for its mobile initiative? 

Understanding the “Mobile Relationship Lifecycle” can help travel businesses of any size create successful mobile apps that add value and transform customer relationships. The recipe for success consists of the following four key ingredients for any travel company to use as they make the move into mobile: increasing reach, deepening engagement, driving loyalty and expanding monetization.

1. Increase your reach to customers wherever they are, on any device with an experience tailored toward their needs that may change throughout the day.

Align objectives surrounding user experience and target demographic with device platform selection (e.g.: iPhone and Android apps tend to be more utilitarian in nature while iPad and Android tablet apps afford more real estate for deeper engagement). Look to build a native app to provide a deeper engagement experience, unique device-level capabilities and more options for increasing loyalty and monetization and a mobile website that is searchable, easily constructed, good for content delivery and cross-platform.

2. Deepen engagement using the unique features of smartphones and tablets to create a world-class user experience that is easy-to-use, entertaining, useful and fun.

Leveraging the unique capabilities of mobile devices can add value to how travelers use and interact with apps. Use a phone’s GPS to send relevant locale information to travelers based on time and location; integrate social capabilities to make it easy for travelers to involve and share with friends and family; and tie-in cloud resources to deliver just-in-time information across different devices people use at different times throughout the day.

3. Drive loyalty and make your app a must-visit again and again with analytics, incentives and notifications.

The more insight into how travelers use and interact with your app, the closer you can align product features and incentives (virtual and real-world rewards) to meet their demands. Consumers have come to embrace frequent updates to apps in exchange for content refreshes, app improvement and rapid innovation. Analytics can measure activity or inactivity while notifications can drive consumers back into an app with messages delivered at just the right time and/or location.

4. Expand monetization with the right business model for your app.

Determine the type of engagement and loyalty actions taking place within your app to understand the best path to monetization. While app store sales continue to be the most popular business model for consumer applications, there is an increasing trend toward freemium models that monetize content consumption or usage, versus only the initial application purchase. Models that monetize third party sponsors or simply reward loyalty are also increasingly popular.

If your company is ready to take-off in mobile, understanding and applying these four concepts will help ensure the creation of mobile apps that transform customer relationships.

Scott Schwarzhoff ([email protected]) is the VP of marketing and business development for Appcelerator (www.appcelerator.com), the leading mobile application development platform, which is used by more than 1.5 million web developers and travel brands such as Zipcar, Hotel Tonight, TripLingo, Tourist, Air Distance and Go Explore! Appcelerator is the #1 app publisher on Apple’s App Store.