Why is a Mobile Website Important to Airlines – and How to Mobilize your Website

The world is globalizing and people are always on the move – the internet is mobilizing and what should you do to make your website available to your customers anytime, anywhere ?

Mobilize your website. That simple.

Most airlines run mobile versions of their websites nowadays, but is everyone making the maximum, or better yet – offering the maximum, out of it ? Definitely not.

Mobile phones have developed well with time and even the most basic mobile phones nowadays have the ability to access the internet.

So, what are the things that are MUST when running a mobile website ?

1. Smaller size of webpages
2. Faster loading time
3. Content adaptability
4. Ease of use
5. Offering the maximum

1. Smaller size of webpages
Advanced mobile phones such as Nokia and SamsungSymbian smartphones, RIM Blackberry devices and Apple iPhones have the ability to display any webpage in its real desktop view, and the Symbian devices with many add on browsers such as Ozone and SkyFire does this ever so easily with a compressed size and Java J2ME applications such as Opera Mini and BOLT, that can be installed on most mobiles offer heavily compressed versions of websites – but this is not the case for the average mobile phone user and an airline should always create their mobile site with this majority in mind. Hence, for a swift operation in any kind of mobile phone – it is a must that the mobile website is written in code that makes the overall page size small. It is also highly advisable to avoid using heavy images on any mobile website as images make up for a bigger part of the ‘size’ of a webpage.

2. Faster Loading Time
Having a smaller sized page certainly makes your mobile website load quicker – but this alone is not enough, in most cases. The way your website is written is a key concern and the person who writes the webpage should make sure to leave away the unimportant code and make a clean mobile webpage as possible. Using XHTML instead of WML is a really good idea, but when using XHTML it is always highly advisable to use a redirect to a special WML version for older phones that lack XHTML support. Although not a major concern, as your mobile website grows in terms of visits, it is always useful to have a better and faster server in order to not compromise the service when the website is busy. Some of the users might be using 3G ( UMTS/HSDPA/HSPA – averaging at least 100kbps in normal conditions and reaching up to 3.6mbps ) for accessing the website while some others may use EDGE or GPRS ( averaging from 16-32kbps ) as well.

3. Content Adaptability
Not all the mobile phone browsers behave in the same way and it is ever so important to make sure your content does not work in one mobile and break in the other. To avoid this from happening, it is important to have special versions for most of the mobile browsers.
As noted in fact no. 2, one of the key steps is to have a WML and a XHTML version, but it is also important to have different versions for different browsers.
For example: Nokia S60 platform ( Symbian ) devices use a WebKit rendering engine based browser that can cope with most, if not all, mobile websites. But there are two versions of this platform that have a touchscreen and that does not. Hence it is important to have a version of your mobile website that is touch optimized as well – and it is nice that most of the touchscreen based browsers, such as Apple iPhone’s Safari and Palm’s Pre support this format. There are also many commercial and free service providers for various device details and Nokia itself publicly publishes UAProfile ( User Agent Profile – that includes most details of a certain mobile device’s browser ) of its mobile devices at Forum Nokia .

4. Ease of use
Having a mobile website is not the only thing, it should be attractive and easier to use for the end user. The site should be less cluttered and should have all the links to key services in an easy to reach way.
A good example is JetBlue’s mobile website

Displayed on an S60 device

Displayed on third party Opera Mini browser

As you can see, it does not break in either of the browsers and has easy to reach links to all the services, yet it still loads very quickly.

5. Making the maximum out of it
The productivity of the site is very important. It is always useless wasting resources on the site if noone uses it, hence it is very important to always make your mobile website popular. One key option is to use an easy to remember web address ( URL ).
Using mobile.yourdomain.com is a good idea, but, let me say – why not go for m.yourdomain.com ? eg: m.jetblue.com
The other easiest method is to simply directly redirect your visitors to a mobile version when they visit your main website from a mobile device ( which is the technique used here on Airline Industry Review ). Hence all that your passengers need to keep in mind is just your airline’s main website .
Always keep in mind that most mobile phones have just a numerical keypad which contains three letters per every key. Hence it is easier if the domain uses less keystrokes per typing the domain – which means typing AGP.COM is far easier than typing CIR.COM since you will need to press each key thrice to get letters C, I and R respectively.

In my opinion, an airline mobile website should contain links to

Flight Status
Flight Schedule
Book flights

which are the most useful functions when visiting an airline website from mobile and it is also very important to have a link to your Full Website since not all the users have basic quality mobile phones.

I hope this post gives you a brief idea on the way how your mobile website should be. Feel free to post any questions that you may have, in the comments section.

I have been running a blog on mobiles for over an year now and has been building up all my websites and browsing the internet, mainly from my mobile due to the lack of a PC and have hence gained a considerable experience and knowledge on this particular subject.

All the links and brands in this article have been added in good faith and none are paid links.

About The Author

Leading airline consultant and entrepreneur. Reach me on @AirlineIndustry on Twitter.