4 tips from Skyscanner on keeping it simple with mobile

It’s baby steps as the online travel industry grapples with understanding mobile’s impact on the bottom line

While everybody in online travel may agree that mobile is the future few, if any, have cracked mobile attribution.

This is something that is top of mind right for metasearch player Skyscanner whose mobile flight search app has been downloaded 30 million times.

While mobile attribution is a complex business, David Llewellyn, Head of Mobile Marketing, Skyscanner says right now the priority for mobile is to keep things simple. Here he shares four insights into how Skyscanner is approaching the mobile challenge.

1.    Understand the customer: For every new user that comes through the door, Skyscanner is trying to understand where they came from, how well they convert and what they do within the app. For example, how many searches do they conduct and how many times have they booked. “This has helped us move away from a blanket targeting of users per market to looking at where high quality users are coming from on a per channel basis and we use Ad Ex tracking to help with that,” says Llewellyn.

2.    Focus on retargeting: A big focus for the firm is retargeting directly within the app. It's no longer just acquiring new users, it’s about increasing the frequency of use by those who have already downloaded the app. In fact 20-25% of Skyscanner’s paid spend is on retargeting activities with the aim of driving previously active users back into the service. So a customer with the flight search app could, for example, be offered a cross-sell ad for car hire in the hope that they down the more functional car hire app launched towards the end of last year.

3.    Look deeper into conversions and care less about the ‘look’: So far Skyscanner has focused mainly on downloads and ratings in the app store to measure success. While these remain top of mind, now Skyscanner is looking more closely at what drives conversions. While many will point to the importance look and feel of an app, Llewellyn stresses that in the flight search business, if an app doesn’t have the airline, route or price the customer is looking for, then it won’t succeed. “The key thing for us on both desktop and mobile is to deliver a seamless service from a search perspective,” he says. “That involves having over 95% of all routes globally covered and being as accurate as possible on pricing.”

4.      Optimise for the app store: With four-star ratings across all the app stores, Skyscanner wants to keep this way. “It’s a fairly new thing, but app store optimisation is a huge focus for just as ensuring your results pages were optimised in the past,” he says

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