Summer Travel Starts with Well Functioning Mobile Apps

Before embarking on a summer vacation, half the fun is in the planning: booking flights to make it feel real, choosing the hotel with the best swimming pool for the kids, and perusing the menu of that Thai restaurant your colleague recommended (and making sure to snag that 6:30pm reservation). In this age of smart devices and social media, getting the jump on vacation planning usually means reaching for your phone. In fact, Booking.com - the most popular booking site in the United States - found that over half of all their bookings and accommodation searches are made on mobile devices. They also found that 80% of travelers use a mobile app when researching a trip.

Given this surge in mobile app usage, and the highly competitive nature of the travel and hospitality industries, application developers and Quality Assurance (QA) teams are feeling the pressure to deliver applications that meet the demand and the expectations of today’s consumers – as no business would want to lose out on revenue due to a poor mobile app experience.

Why Users Abandon Booking Apps

Unfortunately for the travel industry, it already has one of the highest “cart” abandonment rates of all industries - 81.7% - often due to complex checkout processes. When booking anything travel related, many users are juggling other logistical factors in tandem. For example, planning to book a hotel closer to the airport from which their flight is landing, or matching up restaurant reservation times with excursion outings. 

These issues are compounded by the same reasons users would abandon any mobile application. These include buggy or slow experiences, unsupported devices of platforms and difficult-to-use interfaces. But poor user experience tops the chart of why mobile apps are often abandoned. This requires developers to focus on creating better, higher quality apps with intuitive designs that offer an ease of functionality. 

A Reasonable Timeline

Nowadays, it doesn’t have to take months to ramp up a solid mobile application program. The key is making sure your developer teams have a robust testing strategy in place that can solve user experience issues before they can impact users. By ensuring every step of the testing lifecycle is planned, businesses can create tests faster, reduce maintenance costs, and achieve better test coverage and application quality for their mobile apps. 

To establish the strongest testing strategies, businesses should consider putting resources toward implementing automation, which can help developer teams create comprehensive, automated test suites in just hours or days. Furthermore, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence can help reduce test script maintenance – minimizing bandwidth burdens and keeping tests up to date when code changes. With automated continuous testing for mobile apps, businesses can achieve better business outcomes quicker.

Implementing new technology for mobile software testing should come hand in hand with equipping the developers and QA teams with the right tools to leverage it. Many cite several challenges while embracing new technological advancements, such as competing priorities, a lack of talent, insufficient access to resources, and the cost and complexity of implementation. By combining a robust testing strategy and a developer team well positioned to leverage the latest technologies, organizations will have an opportunity to handle an influx of summer bookings.

Get on the Same Page

To be successful this travel season, business leaders and their developer teams need to speak the same language. Oftentimes the mobile app is the first impression a user will have of a business, and a glitchy, complex experience will have them seeking out competitors. When 50% of mobile users won’t consider using apps with a 3-star rating and 85% of users will skip apps with 2-star ratings, it’s critical that mobile apps are optimized in a way that leaves consumers feeling positive (and in the mood to write a positive review). Users will only continue to use an application if it proves to be efficient, functional, and without performance issues.

The key is realizing how to prioritize organizational resources. High-quality, well-designed mobile apps can enhance end-user experience, build brand value, increase sales, improve competitiveness against other vendors, and bolster customer retention and acquisition. By not prioritizing mobile app quality initiatives on the front end, the alternative of losing customers and competitiveness in the market can result in more expensive repercussions. So, before your customers start to book their vacations this summer, avoid abandoned carts by remembering that better apps lead to better bottom lines.

About the Author

Mav Turner is Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Tricentis.