Building a solid mobile strategy is becoming increasingly important for businesses today. This is not only due to Google’s recent search algorithm change that has impacted traffic on sites that are not mobile friendly, but more so a result of a change in consumer behavior.

Today 47% of business and leisure travelers research their upcoming travel from their mobile device. Businesses in the aviation industry therefore need to provide a solid mobile offering for their customers in order to stay competitive.

This change has led many businesses to practice a “mobile first” approach when releasing new products and services. Businesses across the globe are placing more focus on providing services across mobile channels before moving to desktop platforms.

According to recent studies, one out of three visits to travel websites originate from mobile devices and these numbers are continuing to increase.

The Middle East is seeing a massive growth in the sales and penetration level of smartphones in the market. The UAE has one of the highest smartphone penetrations in the world, rating mobile strategy high on the agenda for local businesses. However, despite the statistics, only 13% have a mobile strategy according to research conducted by Adobe.  These numbers are constantly changing from one industry to another. According to a recent study by Google, almost 70% of travelers are now using mobile check-in services and today already 18 out of 20 top airlines provide these facilities.

While the importance of having a mobile strategy is clear, the question is what steps need to be taken to implement a successful mobile offering?

The pressure to “go mobile” is high as companies need to move fast in order to match the service offering of their competitors. Therefore, many companies jump straight to the execution and rollout of new mobile channels. However, it is essential to ask important questions to make the right decisions.

Any mobile strategy should focus on a user centric approach that places the user experience at the center of all applications.

The question at hand is what problems will the mobile solution solve and how can it be beneficial for both the customer and the business. Cost reductions, increase in transactions and user affinity need to be key areas to focus on when designing the solution in the first place.

As with any business strategy, your focus must be on a goal or several goals in order for the strategy to be a success. It is a good idea to align your mobile strategy with your overall business goals and inject some mobile centered goals to support the platform.

What is your business’ end-goal? Would it be to increase online ticket sales in a quarter? Or to reduce queue times at the airport? An example of a goal maybe to create easy and streamlined processes to help users enjoy their experience whilst buying a ticket, checking in at the airport and boarding the plane. This goal should be aligned with your overall strategy and your mobile strategy to ensure consistency across all platforms.

Understanding your end-user is very important to the success of your mobile strategy. You need to re-evaluate your mobile user and understand their demographics – age, culture, education, annual income and so on.

Once you do this, it’s important to understand their pain-points when it comes to your business. Are passengers unhappy with how long it takes to queue at the airport? Are they unaware of all the retail options at Duty-Free? 

It is a good idea to develop different buyer personas for the key users in your target market, something that offers a deeper understanding of each one. Then you can use these findings to help better serve your customers with your app or responsive site.

Remember, your user will make a decision about your app very quickly, typically within 10 seconds. You do not want your users to download your app, or visit your responsive site and never use it again.

Doing your research first will ensure a smooth uptake of your mobile offerings. If you have the budget, it is a good idea to conduct some A/B testing to adjust certain elements of the UX and UI on your mobile app or site. This will ensure you are giving your user what they want and helping them deal with a certain pain point they may have. For example, you may run 50% of your users through one process on your app and the other 50% through an alternative approach. You can then use the analytics to see which was the most successful.

The choice of technology and different platforms available can be a challenge too. When developing a mobile application that is distributed in app stores, the number of technical choices that need to be made also increases. Which platforms to target? How to develop the applications to get the best performance? How to create a scalable solution that doesn't take years to rollout?

One of the most important questions is how to develop the application to get a return on investment as fast as possible is where most companies still go horribly wrong. What we see today is organizations trying to rollout new applications that have a vast number of features and service integrations right from the start. 

While this seems to make sense from a business perspective it also brings some severe challenges which may lead many projects to either be delayed or of horrible quality. First, the initial launch of the solution will take way too much time and the question is what is better: to get immediate return on investment on one feature or wait for a longer time and get an ROI on many features. The second problem is that by delaying the launch of your application you will be unable to get the feedback from your users to improve your mobile offering.

Today’s successful mobile businesses rollout feature by feature, test and get feedback to improve their application further. The possibilities are endless and thus having a clear mobile roadmap is very important. The complexity of setting it up also requires the allocation of budget, which can be a deficit, as mobile compared to other channels can be quite expensive. This includes the channel itself and the integration requirements that come with it such as internal systems and services or the need to setup a backend just for the mobile solution.

A mobile strategy is not only about building channels in form of apps or mobile websites, but it also includes a solid cross-channel marketing strategy. Location services, push notifications and personalization are just some of the important aspects a mobile strategy should include. With todays technology we can know where our customers are and how they move. Customers are willing to provide this information in return for relevant offers. A customer that has just arrived in another country would appreciate tips on roaming, rental cars, transportation etc. while a user that is about to leave his home to jump on a flight wouldn’t mind getting relevant information pushed to them as long as it is highly personalized.

An example of an airline that has experimented with a unique mobile strategy is Delta Airlines. Delta decided to adopt a mobile strategy encompassed around the more apps they have, the better policy, offering their users different apps for the different stages of the travel process. They have one app that helps with purchasing your tickets and another for dedicated to your flight experience. 

One cool feature they offer is their ‘Glass- bottomed jet’ which gives passengers a bird’s eye view of the landmarks they are flying over. Other airlines are embracing what a mobile strategy can do to improve their in flight user experience: 

· United is offering streaming on mobile devices for all customers who download the United app before they fly. They can choose from a variety of movies and TV shows from a Netflix-like program through the app

· Air France has designed an audio app to enhance the flight experience for their customers. They are taking steps towards creating products for customers beyond what they expect from their pre-flight, in- flight and post-flight experience. 

Mobile is no longer just another channel, but one of the main enablers of communication between brand and customer. It provides the most insight and data, allows for highly targeted communication and can add real value to customers if executed well. Businesses need to become “mobile first” in order to stay competitive and learn how to implement new mobile services in a more agile manner. The way we are interacting online is constantly changing and the mobile revolution will not be the last we are witnessing.

About Alexander Rauser

Alexander Rauser is the CEO of Prototype. He has more than 15 years of digital media experience successfully leading companies through innovation, focus and execution. He has a strong creative and technology background that spans across online and offline media.

After working for several creative agencies in Germany as well as leading the design and digital operations for a German record label, Alexander ventured to the UAE in 2005 to build his portfolio across the Middle East. 

In 2010, he founded a strategic digital agency: Prototype Interactive. Today Prototype involves a group of professionals focused on thought leadership, innovation, and exacting tactical execution in a modern digital advertising agency environment.