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Key Takeaways
You need to know your exact mobile vs desktop split: Don’t guess. Check your Google Analytics and see what percentage of sessions are mobile vs desktop. Many managers are now seeing 60–75% of traffic on mobile, with only 20–35% on desktop. Your decisions about design, budget, and priorities should match that reality.
You must think mobile-first, not “mobile-friendly.”: You probably work on a laptop all day, so it’s easy to judge your site by the desktop version. Your guests don’t. They discover you, browse, and often book on their phones. If the mobile experience is an afterthought, you’re quietly leaking bookings.
You should regularly walk through the full booking flow on your phone: At least once a month (and after any major website change), go from homepage → search → filters → property page → checkout on your own phone. Try the “Starbucks line test”: can you complete a booking before your coffee is ready? If not, it’s too slow or too clunky.
You need to test on real devices, not just emulators: Don’t rely only on Chrome’s responsive view. Actually use:
- An iPhone
- An Android (e.g., Samsung, Pixel)
And if possible, click through from Instagram/Facebook so you see how your site behaves in in-app browsers too. That’s how many guests experience your site in reality.
You should fix the “simple” things that quietly kill mobile searches: When you test search and filters on mobile, look for:
- Date pickers that open the keyboard instead of a calendar
- Filters that open a panel you can’t easily close
- Layouts that scroll sideways because an element is too wide
- Filters that are hard to find or use with a thumb
Each one seems small, but together they cause people to bail out mid-search.
You have to optimize for speed where it matters: Search & booking engine pages. Most web vendors obsess over homepage speed, but guests abandon on the search results and booking engine pages. If results take 10–20 seconds to load on mobile, guests won’t wait. You should measure and improve load times specifically on:
- Search results
- Property listings with live availability pricing
- Checkout pages
You should make your photo experience fast and swipeable: Guests obsess over photos, especially on mobile. From session replays, you’d see people swipe through dozens of images. You want:
- Compressed images (ideally under ~200KB) that still look good
- A smooth swipe gallery, like they’re used to on Airbnb/Instagram
- No delays while photos load
- Your gallery experience can make or break a booking decision.
You need a thumb-friendly, low-friction checkout
On your mobile checkout, aim for:
- Only the fields you truly need
- The right keyboard for each field (numeric keypad for card and ZIP, text for name)
- Brief explanations for sensitive fields, like: “We use your phone to text your door code.”
- Compact terms & conditions (with a link to full text), not a monster wall of legal scroll
- The easier it is to complete on a phone, the fewer people you lose at the finish line.
You should support payment methods that make mobile booking effortless:
Don’t make it harder for people to give you money. That means:
- Accepting all major cards (including Amex)
- Exploring Apple Pay / Google Pay to let guests book in a couple of taps
- If you want to encourage bank transfer or lower-fee methods, offer a discount, not a surprise credit-card surcharge at the end
- Reducing friction in payments directly translates into more completed bookings.
You can use tools like Microsoft Clarity to see real frustration on mobile. Watch recordings and look for:
- Rage clicks (tapping something that doesn’t work)
- Overlays or headers/footers taking most of the screen
- Users abandoning right after a slow load or broken element
- These recordings show you what your guests actually struggle with, not what you think they struggle with.
You should benchmark your mobile experience against competitors and real guests: Go through local competitors’ booking flows on your phone. If their experience feels smoother, you’ve got work to do. Also, hand your site to:
- A tech-comfy younger person
- A less tech-savvy older relative or friend
Ask them to find and book a property. If they get confused or stuck, your guests probably do too.
What We Cover In This Episode
In this episode, Conrad and Paul go back to an “old” topic that we often ignore: mobile vs desktop traffic, how the site works on mobile, data on Google Analytics conversions, and more…
