Once you’ve created apps for your destination, it’s important that your visitors be able to find and download them! There are several paths through which your visitors can be directed to your apps:

• Automatic redirection from your website to your apps – a fully functional example with code of how to do that is on tools.discoveranywheremobile.com.
• QR Codes allows visitors to scan directly to your apps – more about this from Discover Anywhere soon.
• Links on your website inviting visitors to download your apps.
• Visitor Center posters/promotional material with straightforward instructions on how to download your apps.
• Star burst stickers highlighting apps in your current brochures, inviting visitors to download the apps; think environmentally – no need to print current offers/information; it’s right there in the palm of your visitor’s hand. For your next brochure run, highlight app downloading information.
• Issue press releases through your normal channels.
• Contact local newspapers, radio stations and television stations to disseminate promotional information.
• Create posters/promotional materials with app information for member locations (especially hotels). Go one step further – invite hotel concierge and front desk staff to a free information seminar that will turn them into app experts.
• Launch a campaign inviting local residents to download and rate your app on the iTunes store to create hype and boost your download numbers. Suggest that they use the apps social media functions (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to spread the word. Offer a prize for the best tweet of the week regarding one of your members or one of your events, and watch the buzz work for you.

The same way you (probably) do on your “normal” website: Google Analytics.

Your mobile website is – in some fundamental sense – just another website and thus can support Google Analytics. You should probably create a new “website profile” on Google to ensure your mobile site analytics are independently tracked. Note that a few older mobile phones – especially BlackBerries – don’t have JavaScript turned on and thus won’t be reported in your results. So it goes.

For your apps, Google provides Google Analytics for Mobile. The reporting in mobile analytics is radically different from website reporting, being based on “events” which are essentially “stuff the user did in the application” – looking at the events calendar, looking at a particular listing, dialing a number (from within your app), etc..

Note that ongoing disputes between Apple and Google may mean use of mobile analytics may be curtailed at some point in the future – or it may not be.

There are other mobile analytics packages available, though at this point we have heard no compelling reasons for learning a new reporting system. Please send us an email if you’ve had a different experience.

A proper mobile website is all about getting visitors the information the need when the need it – in your destination. They’re looking for:

• listing information – hotels, restaurants, sites to see, etc.,
• event information – things to do right now, and
• coupons & special offers.

If your destination is big enough for a brochure, it’s probably big enough for a mobile website. People are going to be looking for information on the mobile web; it’s your job to make sure they get that information.

The reasons you should do an app also?

• it’s generally only a small incremental cost difference to do both,
• the experience of an app is way beyond what can be offered by a mobile website, and
• having an app provides additional marketing features, not the least of which is “buzz”.

“Why do I need an app, or a specialized mobile website – why not just make my current website friendlier for mobile users?”

Note: by “mobilizing your website”, we mean making your current website “look good” on mobile web browsers.

You should mobilize your current website – there is a chance someone is going to need to use your current website from a mobile phone. In fact, if your website is of a modern “correct” design, this can probably be done for a few hundred dollars simply by introducing an additional “CSS” file — ask your web designer.

However – and this is a big however – you really should create a proper mobile website. Why? Because your “normal” website is primarily for people wanting to find out about your destination, your “proper” mobile website is primarily for people who are in your destination.

When people are in your destination and looking for something to do, they don’t need to be sold on coming there – they’re there! Instead they need to get (from your “proper” mobile website):

• listing information – hotels, restaurants, sites to see, etc.,
• event information – things to do right now, and
• coupons & special offers.

Because they’re on a small mobile phone, they don’t have the time or patience to explore your site (even if it’s “mobilized”) to find this information – it needs to be front a center.

“Why aren’t there more photos on my mobile site? Can’t we have interactive Google Maps on my mobile site?”

Your mobile site should be designed to be as usable as possible – it’s for people that are in the destination, not for people planning to visit your destination (that’s what your “normal” mobile site is for).

Because of the poor quality and slow speeds of mobile networks around the United States (and generally elsewhere), your primary design consideration must be getting data to users as quick as possible, and this means keeping things as small as possible by cutting out everything but the most critical data.

A secondary but important criteria is making sure your site runs on as many types of phones as possible, which means avoiding using advanced features of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This need will fade over the next few years as greater numbers of people transition from simple feature phones to advanced smartphones.

Finally: as a rule of thumb, if your mobile site “looks amazing” on a normal desktop browser, it’s probably a lousy mobile site.

No.

If you do charge for your app, do realize that sales for “paid” apps are only a fraction of free apps. Since every visitor using your app is more likely to spend money in your destination (and in particular more money on your members), that’s where the money is to be made.

If revenue generation is required to pay for the app, consider premium placements within the app, banner ads, and charging for access to features such as Twitter.

“If I create an app, how will people know it even exists?”

People will find your app – and your mobile website – through several different ways:

• they’ll find it in the “app store” via search. This means that not only should the name of your app has to be descriptive, but that you should also take advantage of keywords that people may using to find the types of experience your destination offers. If you use general keywords, there’s a lot more potential hits but there’s less likelyhood they’re looking for what you have to offer and there’ll also be many more apps competing for attention. The more specific the keyword, the less search hits you’ll get but the quality of those hits are likely to improve
• they’ll find it via your website. Make sure you mention your apps and mobile enable sites on your homepage (it’s amazing how many people don’t do this). If they’re coming from a smartphone, redirect them to your mobile website if you have one. If they’re coming from an iPhone, BlackBerry or Android and you have an app for these – make sure they’re told about this first!
• do press releases and normal marketing things to mention you have an app
• mention your app in brochures and visitors centres

Unfortunately, this is an incredibly difficult – and expensive – question to answer, as not only are the numbers constantly changing, they’re only really known at a national level, generally months after the fact.

We do know however that tens of millions of iPhones, Android and BlackBerry smartphones are being used in United States, that sales are not only strong but increasing almost 20% every quarter, and that the demographics of smartphone owners skew wealthy and travel friendly.

From there you’ll have to extrapolate from the general population to who’s visiting your destination.

“I have a mobile site, why do I need an app? What’s the difference between an app a mobile site?”

A mobile site has one key advantage: it will work on any modern smartphone. An app, on the other hand, is about experience: it’s fast, it’s immediate, it’s (hopefully) fun to use, it can take advantage of your phone’s features such as the GPS and the camera.

It’s the disadvantages the define the difference between an app and a mobile site. A mobile site is only as good as the mobile Internet connection, which means it often won’t work well inside a building or a rural area, it’s always going to be slow (think of a 1990’s era modem for your PC), every user action will take several seconds, and a “good looking” site usually a bad one (again, because of speed). The main disadvantage of an app is that it only runs on the smartphone you write it for: you iPhone app is never going to work on an Android.

Our belief is that you meet visitors where they are, that you should do both. If visitors use a smartphone that supports apps (the iPhone and the Android), they’ll expect an app experience.

One of the most frequent questions we’re asked is “What is an app? How is it different than a mobile website?”.

The easiest way to explain this is by analogy. An app is simply a fancy word for program that is installed and runs directly on your mobile phone, in exactly the same way that Microsoft Word or Adobe Dreamweaver is a program installed and runs on your computer.

By contrast, your mobile website is just a webpage that’s being viewed on your visitor’s phone, in the same way your website is something your visitors look at in a browser, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox.