20% of visits are mobile
As of September 2012, over 20% of visits to Rezgo powered websites have been from mobile devices including the iPhone, Android phones, iPads, and other tablets. This number is up from 12% just the year before and we expect to see mobile bookings increase to over 30% by this time next year. What does that mean for your tour or activity business? It means, you need to be making sure that your mobile customers can view your website and book your tours and activities easily over their mobile device.
Before you get started
The beauty of the Rezgo mobile booking website is that there is nothing extra you have to do to get it working for you. Before you start pointing customers to your mobile site though, you will want to make sure that your About and Terms content is up to date. The Rezgo mobile booking engine will display this content to your customers in a mobile friendly display. In addition to this content, make sure that all your tours have nice thumbnails and that your tour content is up to date.
QR Codes on your Marketing Material
We have updated the “Link to” functionality to include a QR that will take visitors directly to the tour details page for specific tour or activity. If you offer multiple tours, you can include a QR code for each of your tours on your rack card or brochure. This is a great way to minimize the clicks required to search and book your tours.
Save the QR Code to your computer and then use it in
your marketing materials such a brochure, rack card,
business card, or printed advertisement.
Detecting Mobile with a Static Website
The simplest method for ensuring that your customers are viewing your site with a mobile device is to detect whether or not the person is using a mobile device and redirect them to a mobile friendly page. The benefit of this method is that the customer will view a mobile friendly site right off the bat, instead of having to hunt around for a link to a mobile site on your regular website. The drawback, is that if your website is static and you don’t have a content management system such as WordPress, you will have to maintain two different websites, one for desktop browsers and one for mobile browsers.
Using Rezgo, however, means that you get a complete mobile enhanced website without any extra work or expense. Detecting and redirecting a mobile customer is as easy as placing this javascript in the header of your home page:
<script type=”text/javascript”>
<!–
if (screen.width <= 699) {
document.location = “http://frontend.rezgo.com”;
}
//–>
</script>
In this example, the javascript looks to see if the screen width is less than 699 pixels and if it is, it redirects the customer to http://frontend.rezgo.com. In your case, you will want to replace the URL with the address of your Rezgo booking website. Since your Rezgo site will automatically detect the mobile device and display the mobile interface, the customer will see the mobile interface right away and be able to book on their device.
Using WordPress and Mobile
If you are using WordPress and you want to redirect customers to your mobile booking engine, you can install one of these plugins:
Simple Mobile URL Redirect – This is an extremely simple redirect plugin that allows you to detect for mobile devices and redirect customers to a specific URL. In this case, you will want to point your customers to your Rezgo booking website. By doing so, your customers will always go to your website first before being redirected to Rezgo to handle mobile visitors.
WordPress Mobile Re-direct 1.0 – Similar to the previous plugin, this one will redirect the user using either javascript or PHP. The configuration is also very simple and allows you to specify either a javascript or PHP redirect. The URL should be your Rezgo booking website address.
Once you have either of these redirection methods set-up on your website, you’ll be able to redirect your customers to your Rezgo mobile booking website. Your customers will then be able to browse, check availability, book, and pay on their mobile device.
Supporting mobile customers has never been easier.
Written By | Rezgo
