Where is your Book Now button?

Whenever I pick up my iPhone, I’m usually holding it by the lower half of the phone. If I’m on a website, I appreciate it whenever I’m able to get done whatever is that I’m there for quickly. One easy way is for sites to add a thumbable menu to the bottom that consists of the most necessary or used actions that people do from a smartphone. Checking Google Analytics for some of the sites that I’m working on the destination might be different from when the website is used on the desktop and even tablet.

One example is hotel sites. Looking at several hotels’ websites on mobile, I found it doesn’t matter if you are a boutique hotel or a chain. Digital teams tend to use different approaches.

A couple of the above examples come close to what I would need to book a room, quickly call if I get stuck or to find my way there. With the others, I have to click on menus or try to read text that is too small for the mobile screen.

Limited Attention Span

I don’t know about you, but most of the time when I’m booking a hotel room I’m either in a meeting, streaming one of my favorite British television shows, or out to dinner. In other words, my attention span is limited to this task. I’m not alone. Lexie Martin from Nielsen Norman Group writes in The Attention Economy “We are presented with a wealth of information, but we have the same amount of mental processing power as we have always had.”

TIP: One way to make it easy for me to accomplish my task is to add a sticky BOOK NOW button along with Call and Directions links. I might need to call with questions, and I might need directions when I get to my destination.

The BOOK NOW is probably both a user goal and a business goal. Making it the center of attention and easily reachable by thumb would quickly start the process to reach that goal.

Providence, Rhode Island hotels used in this example: The Dean Hotel, Graduate, Hotel Providence, Hotel Hive (future development), Renaissance Providence, Providence Marriott, Hampton Inn, Omni

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