It has been found that the travel industry is losing clients due to poor customer experience on mobile devices. According to a recent study carried out by U.S. based Jumio, about two out of five customers abandon their travel bookings on mobile devices.
The company discovered that abandonment rates were high, even though with a marginal improvement (10%) compared to the past year. After a careful analysis of various online transactions for different industries, Jumio discovered that the clothing shopping sector had the highest abandonment rate at 61%, followed by the food shopping sector at 41%, then the travel industry came third at 38%.
After studying the impact of the online abandonments, the researchers found out that in the UK for instance, about GBP 2.7 billion were lost last year by travel companies owing to travel customers going away with their bookings.
Despite the high abandonment rates in some sectors, there was some good news. It was uncovered that some sectors were performing awesomely well in the eCommerce space. For instance, the electronic goods sector had an abandonment rate of about 30%, the financial services sector had 25%, while the online gaming sector had a mere 24% online transaction abandonment rate.
According to Jumio's Chief Marketing Officer Marc Barach, there is a need for an improvement in users' mobile experience as well as the security of their transactions if retailers are to maximize the number of completed online transactions.
The report also sought to find out the core issues facing consumers. 33% of the users involved in the study mentioned slow loading speeds, 26% mentioned difficult navigation, 27% mentioned poor payment process, while 21% mentioned small screen sizes.
It was also found that the majority of consumers still depend on devices they are more familiar with; 27% attempt to complete their bookings on a desktop, while 22% attempt again on their mobile devices.
To conclude the report, the researchers stated that they found out that men were more patient with their mobile devices than women. About 75% of men attempted to complete the transaction later, while only 63% of women did.
The report shows that the travel sector should carefully look into the users' mobile experience. Higher efficiency of mobile apps and sites will not only benefit them, but also the customers.
