Rental specialist easyCar has established a mobile presence following a deal with Handy Group to develop a bespoke mobile platform. The move follows consumer research revealing an increasing number of the rental company’s customers access easyCar from their mobiles. Bill Jones, easyCar’s chief executive, said: “Just taking your website and expecting it to work in a mobile…
EasyCar creates full mobile site for customers
Rental specialist easyCar has established a mobile presence following a deal with Handy Group to develop a bespoke mobile platform.
The move follows consumer research revealing an increasing number of the rental company’s customers access easyCar from their mobiles.
Bill Jones, easyCar’s chief executive, said: “Just taking your website and expecting it to work in a mobile environment was never going to be effective, we wanted a relevant and credible solution for this channel.”
Jones pointed to the adoption of next generation phones and applications on devices such as the iPhone or Blackberry as proof of the potential for mobile as a distribution channel.
The company has worked with Handy Group to create a service enabling customers to search, book and pay for car rental on the move and on as many mobile devices as possible.
The mobile site can be accessed via easycar.com in a mobile browser and the technology detects the mobile device being used and serves the easyCar.com mobile website optimised for that device.
Users can also receive a free SMS message with a link to the mobile website by texting ‘easycar’ to 61177 from any UK phone.
Jones said: “The potential is much more than an alternative to browsing on a PC. It will give us access to new segments in the car hire market. There is a significant leisure market that decides on car hire whilst overseas on holiday but tend to rely on the recommendations from their hotel front desk or holiday representative – which offer car hire that is vested in their own commercial interests.”
Michael Lacy, chief executive of Handy Group, which manages the service for easyCar, added that consumers serious about using their mobiles for internet access tend to have a device that handles the internet in an easy way.
“Just under 50% of phones being used to access easyCar are iPhones, 12% are Sony Ericsson’s, followed by Nokia at 10% and the T-Mobile Android phone 4%,” he said.
