Mobile optimised site versus app? No contest, says ebookers.com

If you missed out on the action at our recent sell-out Think Mobile event in London you can still get your hands on the highlights from the day. This is the fourth and last in a series of blog posts where we summarise key points and include video footage from the thought leaders who presented their insights during the sell-out event.

“It’s not a debate anymore about mobile website or apps,” announced Rob Define, ebookers’ Director of Product Strategy, at our recent Think Mobile event. “You need to have both.” 

The online travel company’s slogan is “book easier. travel happier”, and so to fulfil the dual components of their promise they adopted a two-pronged approach in entering the mobile space.  

To help customers “book easier”, last January ebookers launched the first fully transactional multi-product mobile site of any online travel agency in Europe. “What we wanted was really to have 100% the same product that we have on desktop,” said Rob. This meant the mobile site offered a lower cost, faster development time and more straightforward support than an app. Based on the experience of their US-based sister company Orbitz, ebookers also knew that a mobile website would bring more bookings than an app. “As an e-commerce transactional website, we wanted to drive through bookings first.”



The second part of ebookers’ mobile strategy was to help clients “travel happier”. “We did that by launching the ebookersExplorer iPad app in May,” Rob revealed. Mashing together content from several social media sites to create a dynamic travel magazine, the app set out to build customer value and brand awareness through differentiation, and to focus on innovation and inspiration rather than just transactions. 

While in the early days of smartphones customers could visit the ebookers desktop site via their mobiles, since launching their mobile site ebookers experienced a 90% jump in visitors and bookings via mobile during the first five months after launch. Rob’s advice for replicating results like these? For both mobile sites and apps, he counsels companies to “advertise and analyse to succeed”.

Rob reports that organic and paid search drive a high share of visitors to the site, so he recommends a dedicated mobile pay-per-click account to manage all-important positioning. Introducing mobile-targeted ad text is another top tip; ebookers trialled text borrowed from their desktop campaigns against mobile-specific text and saw the latter deliver increases in click-through rates of up to 25%.

Meanwhile to promote the app, the team enlisted the help of AdMob. “We launched an iPad-targeted specific campaign in all 12 countries where ebookers is present in Europe,” Rob says. “As soon as we launched this campaign we saw a 100% increase in downloads of the app, which is phenomenal.” 

Curious to know more? Read the full case study on ebookers’ mobile success here see Rob at Think Mobile presenting here and interviewed here .

Posted by Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

Mobile optimised site versus app? No contest, says ebookers.com
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