Image Credit : Jotham Oakley, Brightec.
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Project Overview
Lowcostholidays are one of the UK’s leading holiday companies with over 2 million customers.
They asked Brightec to design and build a groundbreaking app - the first of its kind (upon its launch in July 2014) to offer a complete holiday booking experience (flights and hotel) all within the app.
The app has currently been downloaded over 500,000 times and it has well over 100,000 active users. Most importantly for lowcostholidays, the app’s conversion rate is 5 times greater than the mobile website.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Andy Ferrett - Brightec Director
Alex Gisbert - Lowcostholidays Marketing Director
Cameron Cooke - Brightec Chief Developer
Project Brief
The travel industry is changing fast. In January 2015 alone the overall number of trips booked on travel apps was up by 300% compared to December 2014. In the first six months of 2014 mobile bookings in the travel industry were up by 20% on the previous year. In the same period desktop bookings had risen by just 2%.
As users quickly migrate from desktop to mobile, travel providers are scrambling to catch up.
Our client - lowcostholidays - wanted to be the first major travel provider that could offer an app where you could book both your hotel and flights without having to navigate away from the app - the complete holiday package.
The main focus of the brief was ‘bookability’. Other competing apps could only offer booking of either hotel or flights, and often users would make the final booking outside of the app itself. Lowcostholidays wanted to allows users to find and book their entire holiday without having to leave the app - the first app of its kind.
Alongside this, lowcostholidays needed to offer their users an easy, enjoyable and speedy holiday booking experience - all on the app.
Project Need
‘Bookability’ makes this app stand out from the crowd. At the time of launching, other competing apps could only offer booking of either hotel or flights, and often users would make the final booking outside of the app itself.
We designed and built the app for Lowcostholidays so it allowed users to find and book their entire holiday without having to leave the app.
This innovation achieved extraordinary results: The app has been downloaded over 500,000 times and it has well over 100,000 active users.
Most importantly for lowcostholidays, the app’s conversion rate is 5 times greater than the mobile website.
The online shopping market is changing fast with 1 in 4 smartphone and tablet owners now reported to use mobile exclusively in their purchase decisions and 47% of young consumers considering mobile their most important media for purchase decisions. In the travel industry, the average booking value for flights was 21% higher on mobile devices than on desktop computers.
With these statistics in mind, we're confident that the lowcostholidays app is well ahead of the game and is perfectly placed in a rapidly changing market.
User Experience
We recognise that people desire a holiday to get away from stress and hassle. We believe that the relaxed holiday experience they seek should start when they book, not after. So for this app we prioritised making the user experience as enjoyable and straightforward as possible.
This app goes beyond just fulfilling a functional role, it aims to maximises the user experience; leading to greater engagement, conversion and ultimately customer satisfaction.
With the app reporting a conversion rate 5 times greater than the company’s mobile website, it appears our goal has been met and user experience has been maximised.
Lowcostholidays have a database of millions of holidays options. From this users can pick and choose the elements they like to create their perfect holiday. The app allows users to speedily interact with this large and complex database of holiday options. Our app enables users to quickly search through the options, create their holiday and then book - all within the app.
Project Marketing
As an app development agency Brightec are not responsible for the marketing of apps built for our customers, unless specifically requested.
Lowcostholidays marketed the app aggressively through TV advertising and other cross promotional activities on their website and social media. This resulted in the app quickly gaining over 500,000 downloads and over 100,000 regular users.
Project Privacy
Brightec take issues of privacy & security very seriously, and is committed to ensuring that its users’ information is secure and used only for its intended purposes. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, Brightec has put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information that it collects online.
TravelTech
TravelTech helps us to get from A to B easier, quicker, cheaper, takes us to places far away while still sitting in our armchair, makes getting lost hard to do and informs, guides and assists. Take us on a journey with your app.
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