With the ever-increasing proliferation of smartphones and tablets, mobile internet access and apps, consumers are becoming much more comfortable with browsing and shopping through the mobile.

As a result, many business sectors are having to really push forward their multi-channel strategy and approach to mobile, and travel is one of these.

There is one area of importance potentially above all others when it comes to successful mobile engagement – the experience.

Consumers have very personal relationships with their mobile devices, so it becomes even more crucial than on other digital channels, that the user experience is right and that the recipient is engaged with on their terms.

At Webcredible, we have been doing a lot of consultancy around the mobile user experience and have recently been working a lot within the travel sector.

A recent customer was Hotels.com, which wanted to optimise its mobile offering in line with customer requirements with the further aim of producing results that would improve brand experience, customer satisfaction and loyalty through the mobile channel.

This is a common problem, for many travel brands when looking to make moves in mobile.

The approach to mobile will differ according to the brand itself, but there are some best practice tips that travel brands can follow when looking to optimise the mobile experience for their customers.

1. Reduce the amount of content

Not everything shown on a PC site can fit reasonably onto a mobile web page, where space is short and every pixel counts.

It’s important to reduce the amount of content shown on the mobile-optimised version. Only include the most important content or features.

2. Use single column layouts

Website pages are difficult to view on small mobile phone screens. Even on smartphones like the iPhone with their relatively large screens, standard web pages load up zoomed out so that they can fit on the screen.

Instead, create single column pages that use up the whole width of the screen.

To add additional content the page should expand downwards rather than across, as scrolling down is easier than scrolling across and users generally prefer it.

3. Present the navigation differently

It’s difficult to fit the navigation across the top of the screen on a mobile web page, therefore you must look for alternative options to display the navigation.

A few options include:

• Place the navigation and site search at the top of the page and leave the content for later pages. This is suitable for users who want to navigate or search upon immediately finding the site – a common action with travel websites
• Place the navigation at the bottom – still accessible but doesn’t get in the way of the content
• Place the navigation in a dropdown link at the top of the page

4. Minimise text entry

Text entry on a mobile phone is much more difficult than when using a desktop or laptop keyboard, so mobile websites must take this into account.

Allowing users to store details in their “My Account” section is helpful, and if they already have an online account, then linking this to them as a mobile user will also avoid any unnecessary text entry.

5. Decide whether you need more than one mobile site

If your mobile website is only going to be seen by smartphone users with fast download speeds then one mobile version will be ok.

However, if you want a broader reach then you should consider creating a paired down version. Facebook goes as far as having three main mobile versions.

6. Take advantage of inbuilt functionality

Many mobile phones have an advantage over PCs – they come with lots of inbuilt functionality that most PCs don’t have.

You can make it easier for users to perform certain tasks by utilising a mobile’s inbuilt functionality and thereby remove the need for manual steps, for example; making calls, seeing an address on a map and finding the nearest.

However, although these kind of best practice guidelines can help with some ‘quick wins’ for your mobile proposition, travel brands must ensure that their mobile strategies are based on real insights into the behaviours and needs of their audiences and target markets through the customer lifecycle.

Live example

In the case of Hotels.com, Webcredible worked to gain more of an understanding of smartphone users’ use of mobile sites and applications (and any other activity) to guide the development of its mobile website and iPhone and Android apps.

The main objectives of the research was to learn:

How people use smartphones in relation to researching, planning and booking travel
How smartphones are used by travellers while they travel to their destination and how they’re used during holidays and business trips
What are the current barriers that prevent some users from travel-related smartphone use

We used diary study methods, interviews and expert analysis projects, along with its mobile industry knowledge and integrated research, to produce a set of guidelines and recommendations for Hotels.com to build its mobile strategy, which were detailed in a report which:

• Mapped smartphone use against the travel lifecycle
• Updated existing personas to include smartphone use
• Highlighted current attitudes and behaviours towards arranging hotels, flights, meals entertainment and other activities across digital channels
• Reported on how smartphones are being used to store travel-related information
• Discussed current barriers to using smartphones for bookings
• Offered ideas and suggestions for future smartphone opportunities

The importance of a mobile optimised website cannot be underestimated in the travel industry.

When online, if a user struggles to complete a task on your website, they are very likely to simply “drop-off” and go to a competitor’s site.

With the increase in speed of mobile devices and connections, this type of behaviour will become increasingly prevalent on mobile devices as well and travel brands need to ensure they’re providing a mobile user experience that seamlessly matches the online experience, making it easy for consumers to complete the tasks they want, when they want, through whichever platform they want.

NB: This is a guest article by Trenton Moss, director at UK-based Webcredible.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Folloyu was founded by Alfred Shaffir at the beginning of 2011, who is also the active CEO. Alfred is a veteran of the semi-conductor industry, doing various roles in Intel and Cadence Design systems.

He holds an MBA from Bar-Ilan University and a BSc in Mechanical engineering from Tel Aviv University.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

So far, Folloyu is bootstrapped.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Online users are subject to interruptions which require them to disengage from their current online activity. The result in most cases is a complete abandonment of the content they were engaged in.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Folloyu’s solution enables online users to switch device while remaining in the same activity they were involved with, in a matter of a click.

For example, online shopper can move from his laptop to his mobile while the information, like what page he was on, shopping cart content, and even secured information (e.g. login) is exactly restored on the smartphone.

The value proposition for websites:

• Increasing mobile presence
• Increasing conversion rates
• Increasing time on site
• Improving overall customer satisfaction and loyalty

In addition, the customer will have access to a digested report describing the usage of Folloyu technology in his site, and additional information about his visitors browsing habits and mobile behaviour.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Folloyu technology fits to almost every website around: ecommerce/traveling, publishers, video, trading, gaming and other content owners. At the moment, we are concentrating our effort in the ecommerce and publishers verticals.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Our service was validated before starting R&D and we are receiving excellent feedback since then. There is a constant flow of customers that recognize Folloyu’s benefits and embed it into there website.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Currently the service is free of charge. In the future we plan to charge our customers according to a monthly subscription plan, based on the amount of traffic a particular website will require. Our customers will receive notification prior to start of billing.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

There is a great opportunity these days to create a solution that on one hand addresses one of the biggest problems in the online world – the abandonment – and on the other hand, utilizes the abundance of devices hooked to the web.

Presently there are some solutions addressing mainly end-users’ in various industries: music listening (fivedetails.com), chatting (trillian.im), video (Vantrix.com) and even Google’s Chrome to Phone extension.

We believe that the competition will continue concentrating on the end users, while Folloyu will focus on producing a broad, generic and simple to implement B2B solution.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

About 5% of the people I have discussed this with, thought it was not a good idea. The rest were enthusiastic. So basically, this is a good idea.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

10,000 subscribers.

Here is a clip:

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

We thought it would be interesting to compare the positions of leading agencies, accommodation providers and airlines year-on-year, picking the same period in 2010 and 2011, the second week of December.

This is what we found for the US and UK:

UK

Agencies:

Destinations and Accommodation:

Airlines:

USA

Agencies:

Destinations and Accommodation:

Airlines:

NB: Image via Shutterstock.

Not to get too technical (anyone who is actually technical will laugh after this explanation), but Flex enabled companies to create highly responsive experiences by moving some of the application logic to the client, enabling users to manipulate some of the data on the page without having to ping the server and reload the page.

This not only delivers super-fast response to the user, but reduces the load on web server, database, etc.

Flex powers many well-known websites and applications from the BBC, Yahoo!, Kodak and Mint.com. It’s also used by prominent travel companies powering multiple applications from Sabre and Travelocity Desktop.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Adobe’s decision to throw in the towel on Flash for mobile devices. By extension Forrester’s Mike Gualtieri noted that the move also spelled the end of Flex development too.

Mike’s a smart guy.

Just a few days later Adobe announced that it will be contributing Flex to an Open Source foundation “…in the same way we contributed PhoneGap to the Apache Foundation when we acquired Nitobi””.

This almost certainly spells the end of Flex as nothing says “I love you” like declaring that you’re ending all significant investment in a platform and leaving the work to “the community”.

This is a big deal for organizations who have made significant investments in Flex and individuals who have personally invested in developing their skills. Those investments will be hard to recover and will require a significant effort in some cases to transition.

I wish there was more guidance provided on how Adobe was going to help their clients and committed developers make the transition other than saying that support for Flex will continue under the open source umbrella, but that HTML5 is the long term direction.

I hope that they will come forward with more details on migration strategy to help their loyal customers manage the transition smoothly and efficiently.

Now, while it may be the right play for Adobe, the way they announced it rubbed me the wrong way.

Firstly, the equivalence they are trying to make with PhoneGap is false.

PhoneGap was already an Open Source product under Nitobi. It’s still my belief that the decision to donate the code to Apache was a condition of the deal driven by Nitobi’s founders to ensure it remained so.

Secondly, the announcement almost presumes that they believe their developers are stupid enough not to see through the spin that is so poor that it’s only worthy of a political campaign – remindful of Bill Clinton’s statement that he was not sure what the definition of “is” actually is.

• The statement “…our customers want more direct control over the underlying technologies they use” attempts to position Adobe as a champion of Open Source projects. It’s as if they think that my merely mentioning open source all developers will get all doe-eyed and appreciate the great gift of ending their investment in the platform. So where is the open sourcing of the other tools that Adobe will continue to develop… and monetize? [cricket sounds]
• “Adobe will continue to contribute to the Flex SDK” – translation: we will provide slightly more than two cats and a dog, but our investment will pale compared to the past.

The final release of Flex, the Flex 4.6 SDK, was delivered on December 1 2011. What Adobe’s statement is telling you, is that basically you’re on your own now.

Companies with lots of time and money invested in Flex need to start planning your evolution from Flex to HMTL5 now.

If you wait too long, you could be left playing catch-up, or worse holding onto an unsupported technology.

The life of the multi-device travel booker is changing, offering an incredible opportunity for travel companies of all shapes and sizes.

But for me, working in the customer experience space, I’m constantly astounded by how many companies seem to forget the part they have to play in the two-way relationship between brand and consumer that is a reality today in our online, socially-connected world.

Research we have been working on clearly shows how few opportunities travel companies have to get it right when it comes to providing a good customer experience, no matter what device consumers are using.

At a general level, we find that 42% say a positive online experience when booking a holiday is important. And, on mobile, the research is even clearer; 40% mobile bookers surveyed said they would expect their experience booking or researching a holiday on a mobile device to be the same or better than on a desktop computer.

If they did struggle when using a mobile device, 46% of those with a mobile device said it would negatively affect their feelings towards the brand and 38% would be likely to book their next holiday with a different provider based on the poor mobile experience.

These are the kind of results that make a CFO or CEO suddenly sit up and see the importance of not just ‘doing mobile’, but doing it right.

The truth is, British consumers, like many others around the world, are incredibly web savvy these days.

After 15 years of ecommerce, there is zero tolerance for sites that don’t deliver a near perfect experience and, with competitors a click away, travel ebusinesses have never had to work so hard to keep our custom. So you’d be forgiven for thinking that ebookers would continue to have similarly low expectations for the latest new digital trends like mobile.

It just isn’t the case. Online bookers see online as one channel, regardless of the device they are using. While travel companies are eager to increasingly have a specific mobile strategy, consumers aren’t compartmentalising in the same way.

The bad news for businesses is that meeting these high expectations will take a lot of hard work. Developing an effective ecommerce strategy that encompasses new trends like mobile and social commerce won’t happen overnight.

And while consumers don’t need to understand that everything works in different ways across different devices or platforms, businesses must because there is a massive opportunity. And, as seen above, a big brand reputation headache is the cost of getting it wrong.

The time to act is now.

These high consumer expectations mean companies have no time to waste. Travel companies have had a long time to get it right online, but with emerging technologies they are not getting any benefit of the doubt.

And the complications aren’t decreasing any time soon. In the last two years it’s been all about smartphones, for the next two it’s going to be smartphones and tablets. And who knows what will follow after that.

We all just might be transacting on Facebook in the near future. So putting in place a platform-proofed strategy for the short and long term will be vital.

Of course, the potential rewards are plentiful, you just have to make sure that the consumer experience – no matter what device they use – is as good as it can possibly be.

NB: This is a guest article by Geoff Galat, chief marketing officer at Tealeaf.

NB2: Full report and research available from Tealeaf.

NB3: Image via Shutterstock.

But while booking travel products is certainly more complex than buying a loaf of bread at a supermarket (or, indeed, online), this clip from Google Analytics demonstrates the frustrations many users must go through with online checkouts in general, especially when the guidance is less than helpful.

It’s rather funny as well…

The set of regulations, if approved, will have a wide ranging effect across travel technology, meaning if companies should start preparing impact as soon as possible.

The web and self service technology are at the heart of air travel today. But this has created a series of obstacles for those with disabilities.

The American Disabilities Act (ADA) has been the basis for a wide range of rules that govern access for those with disabilities in order to give as much equal access to those who have some form of disability.

The original law was passed in 1990 and was a significant piece of legislation, one might argue, akin to the enactment of broad civil rights legislation such as de-segregation and the emancipation of women.

The law was updated in 2008, with the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) tackling issues of access to information and the concept of self service kiosks in transportation.

There are two specific titles which were updated and are relevant: Title II Public Entities (and public transportation) and Title IV Telecommunications. The Department of Transportation (DOT) is proposing air travel websites, as well as automated airport check-in kiosks, be made accessible to people with disabilities.

So it is seeking input on a wide variety of topics:

• What should be the standards for web and kiosk accessibility?
• Which websites and kiosks should be covered?
• How long should companies be given to make the necessary changes?
• What form should the regulation take?
• How long before regulations can be implemented?

Curiously, the regulations are focussing on one particular sector of the industry – aviation.

But why stop with just air. What about hotels and cars. As more self service technology is implemented, perhaps the entire industry should adopt wide-ranging overhauls to their websites. Indeed, standards for accessibility should be common for all services to quicken development and provide uniformity across the industry.

The subject of accessibility for reservation agents was significantly enhanced in the 1980s with the advent of the PC. The combination of a braille based tablet for reading and a keyboard for input opened up the possibility for visually impaired agents to work in airline call centres.

However the move to graphical interfaces from the character-based systems worked against those who were visually impaired. Now the combination of sound and touch as interfaces has massively improved in recent years and the visually impaired better access – enabling both the professional and consumer to work with the world of travel data.

But with the arrival of new forms of access and apps that are opening up mobile devices to so-called Big Data, perhaps it is time that the industry takes advantage of these developments to create better solutions for those with disabilities.

Developing systems that can access the same data and services, so there are no barriers to entry at a user level, is an admirable effort and the DoT should be applauded for this initiative.

The French actor was in a spot of bother earlier this week after it emerged he had, err, taken a leak on the carpet of a CityJet aircraft after the seatbelt sign was turned on for take-off for a flight from Paris to Dublin.

Inevitable high profile headlines ensued, Depardieu has since apologised.

Ryanair, of course, just wants to take the piss…

[Clearly some irony in all this given the stories a few years back about Ryanair threatening to introduce pay-to-pee on some flights]

Every day new records are broken in terms of mobile usage in travel. But there is no definitive guide yet on how to turn a hotel mobile website into a successful engagement platform for mobile users.

Mobile users have a different mindset when approaching websites, therefore your hotel’s website experience must be quite different to engage them.

In addition, mobile users are much more task-oriented than desktop users. And mobile users are either searching for local content or for a specific brand.

Mobile means smartphones, not tablets. Tablets provide an experience similar to desktops.

But while certain mechanisms may need to be adapted to a multi-touch experience, most websites that are optimized for 1024×768 should work well on tablets.

Considering these two factors, below are five simple tips to turn your hotel mobile website into a successful engagement platform for mobile users:

1. Mobile SEO matters.

One little known fact: Google is dominant in mobile search (Google mobile market share is over 97%). Hence, a mobile SEO strategy can rely on Google only.

Start by ensuring that you sitemap marks your mobile pages with the “mobile” tag.

Also, use Google’s mobile keywords tool to verify whether you need different content for your mobile website.

2. Optimize the website for low bandwidth and high latency.

With the emergence of iPhone and Android, many web developers assume that mobile has become a web-friendly environment.

However, mobile is still an aggressive environment where bandwidth is restricted and latency is 10x worst than using DSL.

So, a hotel mobile website has to follow a few simple rules, the most important one being that pages should be smaller than 20 kbytes.

The W3 mobile validator tool identifies what is needed to optimize your mobile website.

3. Display the address boldly.

Looking for the property’s address and directions is the top task users perform on a hotel mobile website. A whopping 1.5% of users actually check out the hotel’s location and get directions via Google Maps.

Hence, the address of the properly should be highlighted and easy to click through to Google Maps on every page.

4. Have a click-to-call button.

The second most important task users want to complete when accessing the hotel website from their mobile phone is to call the hotel.

To service these users representing over 1% of mobile traffic, your hotel mobile website should display the phone number prominently and enable direct click-to-call.

Note that it is critical to display phone numbers in the international format with “+” and the country code so that international users can call your hotel.

5. Provide a simple booking experience.

Click-through-rates (CTRs) for pages that are formatted for mobile are 75% higher than pages that are not mobile-optimized.

Therefore, providing a multi-touch booking experience is critical to ensure that you can capitalize on your hotel’s mobile website.

While mobile booking is still fairly new, an average of 1% of all mobile visitors actually book a hotel reservation using a multi-touch booking engine.

NB: This is a guest article by Pedro Colaco, president and CEO of GuestCentric.

Goh, who took up the role earlier this year, sent a letter to customers yesterday to say sorry for a string of issues with the new website which launched seven weeks ago.

Visitors to the site found a lot of the functionality did not work properly, including changing flights, redeeming loyalty points, online check-in and logging in to membership tools.

“We make no excuses for our failure to deliver an acceptable level of online service”, says Goh in the letter, before pledging to resolve the problems and claiming “significant progress” so far as it also looks to investigate why such a major series of issues went undetected.

“As with all new initiatives that we undertake, the intention behind the website revamp was to improve on our customers’ experience with us. I am truly sorry that the new website, with its technical problems, has instead caused much aggravation for many of our customers.”

Fans of the airline’s Facebook page are not in a particularly forgiving mood. One says:

“It took you two months to acknowledge a serious problem on your website… What is your time line to fix the issue? Two years? Why do you inconvenience your customer when the website is obviously sub standard… Why cant you test it in a non production environment.. Why do you even allow such a thing to happen in the first place?”

Others are angry that the airline has only offered an apology and not offered to compensate those who had travel plans cancelled as a result of not being able to check in or change flights.

The launch of the new site came just five months after Goh joined from sister airline SilkAir, replacing CEO Chew Choon Seng who retired at the end of 2010 after seven years in the position.

The Webcredible 2011 Flights Online Report examines 20 air product retailers (airlines and online travel agencies) and ranks them based on 20 criteria around UEX and design.

Virgin just lost out in the 2010 study, coming in third place behind EasyJet and eventual winner BA.

Securing the top spot this year, Webcredible says of the Virgin site:

“Virgin Atlantic has made clear improvements scoring highly across best practice usability guidelines including error handling methods, providing the ability to share pages with friends, and offering clear search functions.”

The study also looked at mobile versions of websites. Webcredible says the pair “have started to create more useful mobile offerings with both carrier airlines judged favourably in their efforts to engage customers across channels”.

The total average across the 20 websites increased on the previous year, rising from 64.4% in 2010 to 65.7 in 2011.

“With only nine websites scoring between 60-69 points and 5 websites scoring between 50 and 59 points, most UK travel sites are still failing to do enough to maximise their share of the potential revenue in this highly competitive marketplace by addressing key usability issues.”

The study found there was no significant disparity between online travel agencies and airline websites, although it remarks that did “lag behind in terms of showing prices early on during the booking journey as well as offering easy refinement of searches, displaying a contact telephone number, and showing a clear progress bar during the flight booking process”.

Airline websites were singled out for providing information around cancellations and refunds being prominent enough for users to find.

Here is the full table:

Travelshark closed the round today from DLA Holdings, bringing its total investment so far to $8 million.

The travel site network provider recently admitted its former name, Swiftrank, was not resonating with customers and users and decided to make a wholesale change to corporate image.

Travelshark CEO Sue Heilbonner claims the company has achieved “impressive revenue growth and global sales” since its last year (TLabs Showcase – Swiftrank).

The latest injection of capital will fuel investment in sales, marketing and product development, Heilbonner says.

Companies named on the customer roster include Intercontinental Hotels Group, MGM Resorts, Highgate Holdings and TIG Global.

The Icann board approved the change at a special meeting in Singapore earlier today, effectively ending the current and increasingly restrictive 22 domain extensions (such as .com, .co.[country], .biz, etc) and opening the system up to an almost infinite number of new forms.

The expansion of the so-called Generic Top-Level Domain system will allow companies or individuals to create extensions based on geography, brand name, subjects, groups or individuals.

Perhaps most importantly the programme will see the introduction of the entire offering also in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts.

The new endings will start hitting in the web during 2012, with organisations and individuals urged to apply to Icann between January 12 2012 and April 12 2012.

The move is being heralded as one of the biggest shake-ups in the history of the web, with Icann in particular calling it the dawn of a “new internet age”.

The travel industry, of course, has heard some this rhetoric before, when Tralliance oversaw the introduction of the .travel domain in 2005, a programme which still has an amazing ability to divide opinion across the sector.

Thousands of travel organisations have registered .travel domain extensions, but it is still relatively rare to find publicised web address using the .travel moniker.

In the early days of the .travel initiative there were concerns about indexing and search engine optimisation issues, worries which will once again be multiplied on a grander scale again with Icann’s decision today.

There does appear to be an acceptance that major change is not only needed by will be embraced by organisations. Domain seller Sedo has research which says 58% of companies would be keen to run their own domain name extension if the opportunity came up.

Instead, the company [launched in June 2010, TLabs Showcase - Swiftrank] has come up with the name TravelShark.

CEO Sue Heilbronner reckons:

“I can list a wealth of complex strategic reasons for the rebrand and depict the forecasted impact on detailed graphs, but the truth is, we had a less-than-optimal name and found a better one. Having a resonant name has opened the door to new possibilities for marketing and brand development unavailable until now.”

There is also a rather bizarre video to celebrate and hopefully explain the change:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cefU0DgSvdQ

A popular new design trend that seems to be taking off is the use of full screen image backgrounds on travel websites.

There are several hotels and resorts which have picked up on this trend and used it to great effect delivering some very stylish websites.

Why

The use of strong destination images and beautiful shots to reflect the ambiance and atmosphere of a property is not a new concept in hotel marketing.

With more and more people accessing the internet with large monitors and fast connections it is possible to produce sites which utilize very large images to have a strong visual impact.

When implemented properly and combined with mobile browser friendly versions, the use of full screen photography offers an attention grabbing way to allow the look and feel of the property to dominate the design without negatively affecting the user experience.

The Hotel Missoni is a good example, with the website for this stylish chain making use of full screen images to show off the style of their properties with the highlight colours from images carrying through to the navigation.

Technical

There are a number of ways that full screen images can be included within the design.

Some large background sites use a fluid or elastic layout which stretches the image across the browser, while others opt for a large fixed size image background image.

There are many techniques that can be used to produce this effect. One of the easiest is to use CSS to stretch the image, placing the HTML on top in a container. This will distort the image if being viewed on a very wide or tall browser so selecting images which can tolerate horizontal or vertical stretching is important.

The effect can also be produced using JavaScript. The jQuery plugin Supersized is a useful tool to create this effect.

Another and perhaps the most traditional method to implement this effect is to use Flash.

While Flash presents issues for mobile browsers and search engine optimisation these can be overcome with creative thinking and alternate versions, allowing total control over the styling of how images are presented.

While full screen images look great on modern widescreen monitors it’s important to remember that many users are accessing websites in other ways.

Travellers are likely to take a look at hotel websites while on the road, accessing reservations on their mobile phones and other hand held browsers.

Large screen backgrounds aren’t quite so friendly when viewed on small screens so having alternate versions of the site is essential.

Usability

There are some important usability factors to consider before embarking on a site design that contains full screen images.

It’s essential that pages are created to load as quickly as possible, using compressed images with the minimum file size possible.

While connections are getting faster all the time it is still essential that file sizes are minimised and where appropriate thought is given to how the page loads.

Where text is positioned over the images one option is to use JavaScript to ensure that the text does not load until after the images have finished loading. This ensures that people don’t start reading text and then are put off by the background loading behind it.

Of course looking at how any text displays over your image is vital. The photo has to have impact without being distracting and competing with any text that overlays it. Also important is how the same text will appear overlaid onto different images.

The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas has navigation text on the top left of the screen which looks great on four of the revolving images but virtually disappears when it reaches one with a lighter background, as can be seen on the second image below.

It’s also worth thinking about users expectations. If the site navigation is complicated or different it may frustrate visitors, making it important to guide them as clearly as possible.

The striking Sanderson Hotel website makes great use of quirky photography to give their site a lot of impact.

Large oversized text helps lead visitors around the site with clear instructions making it obvious where to click for more information (or where to hit the screen in order to hide it).

The large reservations calendar ensures users will have no problem in making an online booking.

Search engine optimisation

Ensuring that your site can be found by search engines is essential, after all you might have the most visually stunning site in the world but it won’t be doing you any good if nobody can find it.

Making the decision to use full-screen images doesn’t mean that you can dispense with good quality, well optimised copy. It’s important to ensure you use HTML to add some carefully optimised copy to your site.

The Hoxton Hotel makes great use of full screen photography throughout their site which uses subtly animated Flash to immerse the visitor on a website which really does show off the character and soul of the hotel.

With a move to a very visual site it was key that they maintained their search rankings. Developers Codegent came up with the following solution:

“Our solution was to break down the Flash components of the site into separate files housed within html, each with their own indexable url and no-flash versions to maintain optimisation.”

This clearly seems to have worked for the Hoxton Hotel and the site is also easy to view and use on mobile devices.

Loss of copy

Content might be king but as they say, a picture can be worth a thousand words.

While sites dominated by visuals may have less opportunities to present copy on the site, for hotels images showing the rooms and facilities are worth far more to visitors than a description of the same.

The Hoxton Hotel integrates copy to describe the facilities in an innovative way which actively encourages visitors to explore the site. Hot spots on the images contain information titbits about everything from the mattress type to the breakfast.

Conclusion

Using full screen photography is a fantastic way to create a website with impact that really shows off the style and facilities of hotel.

However, before leaping into the design it is vital to weigh up and plan how to overcome potential usability issues alongside ensuring that the site remains visible and well optimised for search engines.

NB: This is a guest post by Kate Waite of Dot Tourism, a digital branding and online marketing agency.

Of course, a survey coming from a digital marketing company needs to be taken with a healthy dose of scepticism, but UK-Clickscene has developed a patent pending application which measures website content and levels of traffic hitting such pages.

The study of 1,185 UK-registered travel websites found that 39% do not get any visitors to pages from natural search results or paid-for advertising in search engines.

Furthermore, only 13% (155) of the travel websites monitored had used PPC techniques such as Google AdWords.

Clickscene managing directo Andrew Willis claims that a million new domain names were registered in the UK in 2010 (the survey didn’t outline how many were travel sites) but very few push forward with a concerted marketing plan.

Interestingly, Willis says that its system found almost 2,100 travel-related business that had registered web addresses, but only 1,185 had actually put the site live on the web.

This, he argues, is because many companies buy domain names to stop others using them or may have folded since registering the URL.

Not content with a simple travel system… “I want Space Shuttle!”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VN12leZArk

Original story:

Ryanair suffered an unfortunate web error on New Year’s Day when users discovered they were unable to search for flights in 2011.

The problem appears to have surfaced at around midnight GMT on New Year’s Day when users would be looking for flights in the coming months.

Rather than seeing months for 2011 in the drop-down menus in flight search, visitors were greeted with months for the previous year, 2010.

Flights for 2011 could be found on the site prior to 1 January 2011 – meaning the error probably only kicked in as the calendar turned from 2010 to 2011.

It is unclear as yet how many users were affected by the problem, but reaction was widespread and critical on social media channels such as Twitter.

The airline took around 14 hours to fix the problem. Ryanair has yet to respond to media queries regarding the incident.

This is not the first time in recent months that the airline has faced technical problems with its website. The Navitaire-run online booking and check-in system collapsed for up to nine hours  in September 2010.

People go on holiday for a variety of reasons, but research shows the kind of holiday we want is linked to our personality type.

People who are introverted, who tend to be fairly fixed in their job and who have what you might call a “solid” home life are the ones who seek a “get away from it all” kind of holiday.

But individuals who are dynamic, who socialise a great deal, who are often out and about, are faced with so many new experiences every day, they want something more daring, exciting, thrilling.

That kind of basic difference between holiday makers is also reflected in the kind of experience they want online when booking their travel.

The introverted individuals want to see something that is clearly “get away from it all”, but the extroverts, the dynamic people need to have an exciting website, with lots of different stimulation.

These people live life in the fast lane, and they want their websites to be the same.

Trying to be everything to everyone

This presents a clear problem for travel companies, since many of them offer a variety of holidays to meet the range of tastes. The difficulty for the company centres on the fact they do not know who is visiting their website in advance. Consequently they are unable to always provide the right experience with their website to match the personality of the visitor.

As a result, ebookers frequently enter a site and then disappear quickly because they are not seeing something which connects with their personality type. Several studies have shown that the time people wait to see if a site is for them, is less than one second.

Travel companies therefore have to demonstrate that what they are offering on their website matches the visiting individual’s personality immediately. This means they may well need more than one website.

Indeed, lack of website connection to personality is one of the reasons why people revisit sites. The first time, it wasn’t for them in that first fraction of a second. The result is they do not have any memory formed for that site, which is why they can revisit sites, only to spend a second or two there, realising they have been there before.

Travel companies could view this repeated visiting as positive – when in fact it is a negative indicator,

suggesting their sites are not appealing to people. Once people do connect with a website because it matches their traveller personality, there are two factors which companies need to take into account.

Firstly, as a study from Tealeaf confirms, there is a large amount of browsing and going from site to site. Central to this is the assessment of trust. People want to be confident that the purchase they intend making is from a reputable company and that the website they are using can be trusted.

It is about knowing that when you put your credit card into the website, you won’t be confronted with an error message or be left in any doubt about your security. Indeed, research which has included eye-tracking analysis of website visitors shows that one of the key elements people look for on a web page is a signal of trust.

How to build trust online when brand affinity is weak

In the past, the company brand was one of the elements of trust which people connected with. However, as the research shows, brands are becoming less influential and hence ebookers are looking for other signals of trust on web pages.

These include a physical address, a telephone number and an email address – all prominently displayed at the bottom of the page (where most people look for these items). When people cannot see these elements, they will either leave the site, due to lack of trust, or look around for other signals that the company can be trusted.

Central to that trust is social proof. Human beings behave in ways designed to protect them from harm. If everyone is doing something, the rest of the people around them tend also to do it. Clearly, if many people are doing something and they don’t come to any harm, then it is “the right thing to do”.

As a result, people are always looking for signals on a web page that what they are dealing with is acceptable to more than one person. They want to see that the product on offer is being used by many people – it is social proof that it is OK to buy.

With holiday purchases – being seen by many people as their most significant item bought each year – then social proof becomes paramount. People want to know that the destination they are considering or that the hotel they want to book is also acceptable to other people.

Holiday websites which therefore demonstrate social proof – in the form of reviews and comments from previous tourists – are likely to gain more business than those which do not include social evidence.

Social acceptance

There is another aspect of the social side of travel websites to consider as well. Social Acceptance Theory is the psychological notion that we want other people to tell us we have done the right thing.

This boosts our confidence that the decisions we have made are correct. Part of the decision-making process for any purchase is to work out whether other people will think we have acted correctly.

As a result, interactive comment systems on travel websites serve a second purpose. Not only do they help buyers make up their mind, as a result of social proof, they also enable them to gain social acceptance once other users start to give them positive comments about their decision to visit a particular destination.

Holidaymakers want one of two things – an escape or a new experience. Online, the website must match those desires if it is truly to connect. But it must do more than that. Travel websites also need to enable trust and confidence – which are powerful motivators in ebookers.

Equally, travel websites need to establish social proof and provide a method of potential customers gaining social acceptance.

NB: This is a guest by Graham Jones, an internet psychologist and author specialising in how customers interact with the web. Download the full Tealeaf report.

This is a tough time for travel agents on Main Street and the High Street. The merger of Thomas Cook and the Co-operative’s travel business in the UK, for example, is just the latest sign of an industry struggling to adapt to a radically-changed world.

However, while mergers can bring greater market share and valuable efficiencies, such deals are typically defensive.

High Street agents must take the initiative on other fronts, particularly online, if they are to secure their futures.

Travel agencies have suffered a hard recession, with bookings severely affected by weak consumer confidence.

According to the Office of National Statistics, the number of Britons taking holidays abroad fell by 8% in the year to the end of August.

Throw in the ash cloud episode, the weakness of sterling and concerns about public spending cuts, and the past two years have taken their toll.

Furthermore, a recent survey by insolvency specialists Begbies Traynor found more than 6,500 UK firms in the leisure and travel industry facing significant or critical financial problems.

However, a weak economy is just one factor undermining agencies’ financial health. The unstoppable rise of the web has also fundamentally altered consumer behaviour.

Even when economic growth resumes, this change will continue eroding the foundations of the High Street business model.

This is hardly news, of course, and yet it is striking how few traditional agencies are properly embracing the internet and turning it to their advantage.

The web has spawned three principal threats to the offline agent.

• Most obviously, online travel agencies and aggregators have become hugely popular, as have ancillary holiday services offered online by airlines.
• Such providers have contributed to a second major challenge for established agents, namely the growing readiness of holidaymakers to book travel without expert help, coupled with the decline of the package holiday.
• Lastly, user-generated content, and particularly TripAdvisor, has increased travellers’ self-reliance and displaced agents as sources of travel advice.

Yet, despite these clear challenges, few agents have so far tackled the web in a coherent manner.

For example, many agent websites merely serve as online brochures, offering little ecommerce capability and merely directing visitors to a branch or call centre. As a result, the market share ceded to new rivals may be difficult to reclaim.

Nevertheless, with the right business strategy, high street agents have a chance to regain the initiative by exploiting their unique strengths.

To compete effectively, such businesses must have sales, marketing and distribution strategies that properly integrate the online and offline worlds.

Websites are excellent for simple trips and transactions, so agents should ensure they offer this capability. However, for more complex itineraries, the human agent remains invaluable, making a branch presence a competitive advantage.

Therefore, the challenge and opportunity is to create integrated 21st century travel agencies that offer twin on- and offline paths to a booking, deliver a consistent customer experience and enable customers to transfer easily between these paths as their needs dictate.

At the same time, the crisis currently afflicting TripAdvisor has created an opportunity for agents to reclaim their authority and relevance in the social media age.

TripAdvisor is in the firing line for supposedly lacking a rigorous process to establish whether posted reviews are genuine.

Reports, which do appear to be gaining some momentum, suggest people have been abusing the system by posting negative, baseless reviews about competitors, or anonymously heaping excessive praise on their own establishments.

As a business dependent on the mutual trust of its community, TripAdvisor faces a fundamental threat from these disclosures.

So, the opportunity for agents is not to build a TripAdvisor rival – trying to cultivate your own online community is an excellent way to waste money.

Instead, travel agents should leverage TripAdvisor’s popularity by supplying the credible content the website so badly needs.

Having arranged customers’ accommodation, travel agents could gather and supply verified traveller reviews to TripAdvisor and similar sites, applying the agent’s own logo to each posting as a kitemark of authenticity.

The online visibility so gained would promote travel agents to a highly targeted audience, demonstrate agents’ enduring value and could help drive prequalified traffic to agents’ own websites.

NB: This is a guest post for by Matt Lovering, a director at Maddox Consulting.