Holiday Houses gets a mobile makeover

Holiday Houses gets a mobile makeover

New Zealand’s number one holiday rental website, Holiday Houses (holidayhouses.co.nz), has been revamped to optimise content for its burgeoning audience of mobile browsers.

Holiday Houses general manager Andrew McKaskell said visits to Holiday Houses from mobile devices had grown massively over the past year. “In the first two months of 2014 we’ve seen visits from tablets up 75% on a year ago, and via smartphone they’re up a staggering 120% on this time “Travel bookings and a mobile device go hand-in-hand as as people search, book and pay for stays on the go. Users’ expectations are changing and we’d be fools not to put a lot of effort into making our site mobile-friendly. Mobile device usage is now 35% of our audience, up from 20% a year ago.

In a year’s time we expect there will be more people visiting Holiday Houses via a phone or a tablet than via their desktop.”

In January and February this year, Holiday Houses received 1.2 million visits (Source: Google Analytics) with 35% via a mobile device, up from 20% a year ago. Mr McKaskell said Apple was the holiday home renter’s device of choice. “New Zealanders’ infatuation with Apple looms large in the visit data and generated 76% of mobile activity. Daylight was second, followed by Samsung with 17% Mr McKaskell said the new user experience for Holiday Houses visitors was the site’s first extensive overhaul since 2009.

“It’s well overdue and we’re sure our owners and large audience of renters will
be pleased that we’ve dragged the interface kicking and screaming into 2014. The site is now fresh, clean and image rich – plus it performs very well on mobile devices now.”

Barriers to mobile commerce Recent research from Business Insider identified significant barriers to mobile becoming increasingly important for travel-elated research and purchases included bad user experience design, friction
preventing users from completing transactions on mobile, and poor wifi and 4G coverage.

“After the overhaul we’re looking forward to the feedback from Holiday Houses browsers on the user experience front,” Mr McKaskell said. “In terms of payments, we’re working to make these as seamless as possible and like almost every web-based business in the world we are keen to see more extensive wifi and data coverage across New Zealand.”

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