The online travel firm has completely redesigned their mobile website.
Though Orbitz has had an mobile website up and running for some time now, its first version experienced a large number of struggles and troubles along the way, which caused the online travel company to come up with a second generation site that has experienced far superior optimization.
The former mobile website was often unavailable to smartphone and tablet users.
It was not uncommon for the m-commerce site to present the following message “Our mobile magic hasn’t spread to this page yet, but you can still view it on the full site.” By tapping that text, the mobile user would be directed to the standard website, which was very difficult for to see and navigate on a phone’s tiny screen.
Today’s Orbitz m-commerce site has changed dramatically and is fully optimized.
Now, the company’s “mobile magic” has been brought to every page, through a comprehensive redesign. This has been a tremendous leap forward from the first generation site, which was created back in 2010.
According to the Orbitz vice president of product strategy, Chris Brown, “In 2010, mobile was a percent or two of our business. In 2012, 20% of our hotel booking comes through mobile.” Brown went on to explain that “Mobile is becoming a substantial part of the way we sell travel, opening up new doors and new use cases.”
This was a significant point of interest when Brown spoke at the San Diego based 2012 Internet Retailer Mobile Marketing & Commerce Forum, as a featured speaker. In fact, the address that he gave was entitled “Ready for a redesign? Learning from what you have to make your site better.” Naturally, the new Orbitz site was a prime example of the types of improvements that can be made to an mcommerce site, as discussed in Brown’s address.
He pointed out that failing to deliver a page that is optimized for mobile should be considered the primary sign that an mobile commerce redesign as required, as it could stop a consumer from being able to find what he or she is seeking – even if it is precisely what is being offered by the website.
