Yesterday, at the Skift Global Forum here in NYC, our Founder and CEO Michael Jaconi joined Technology Editor Sean O'Neill on stage, discussing all things travel and how mobile has impacted this multi-billion dollar industry. As part of that conversation, Mike shared our most recent news— the launch of Button's 'Purchase Path'— our latest solution allowing travel companies around the world to optimize their mobile partnerships by providing users with the best path to purchase.

"Travel is the banner industry for partnerships driving better outcomes for the customer. As customer behavior has changed to focus on mobile devices, however, the user experience of these partnerships hasn't kept up, diminishing both performance and customer satisfaction."— Chris Maddern, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer at Button

The travel industry is constantly growing, especially as our smartphones continue to evolve into everyday necessities. In the US alone, the travel space is expected to surpass $100 billion by 2020, showing record growth year-over-year. However, when it comes to consumer bookings, the path from searching to actually booking has remained a complex experience. Users are often sent from the research phase in a beautifully-designed app to booking in a poorly-optimized mobile web experience, and in many cases still sent to desktop websites while in mobile. As users pinch and zoom trying to confirm all the details in this less-than-ideal experience, we often see them drop off without booking— a lose, lose all around.

We decided to put Purchase Path to the test with a leading metasearch giant, optimizing their links to an OTA partner and creating a seamless mobile experience between the two. With this new implementation we saw a 33% increase in conversion and a 50% increase in overall booking value per tap!

With Button's latest solution, travel publishers and metasearch companies are now able to optimize their mobile flows, giving them the ability to manage one integration within the Button Marketplace and unlocking the opportunity to improve on existing mobile flows. Button's technology makes it possible for users to land in-app with their desired booking information in-place, properly transferring these details from the metasearch engine to the final booking provider. Additionally, with Button powering integrations, metasearch companies can now capture much more data on purchases driven from their properties.

As Chris Maddern puts it: "We built Button Purchase Path to be a scalable solution, giving the user the best path to purchase every time— reliably & quickly extending these partnerships into both apps and mobile web."

If you're interested in hearing more about Purchase Path to optimize with Button or our other mobile solutions, be sure to check out www.usebutton.com.