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Please Let It Be Available: Mobile Booking Service

PLIBA.mobi (”Please Let It Be Available” - here’s their non-mobi site, here’s their press release) aims to be premier the cell/mobile-friendly booking agent, allowing users to book from an expanding list of services and providers, which currently includes hostels and car rentals.

I tested the PLIBA.mobi website from my desktop. A RAZR on GPRS is just too painful an experience for web-browsing. That being said, PLIBA.mobi looks the same in a browser as it would on a phone - so you can try it out too.

PLIBA starts with a simple search screen:

Unfortunately, search results were generally weak, and would have been particularly frustrating on a mobile. Here’s the search results for “car rentals in london,” for example - what I would consider to be a fairly typical, easy to parse our search from a traveller:

I’d been hoping to see a list of major car rental outlets, sorted by location. The only relevant option is the last one listed, which appears to be a specialty service, unless Ferraris are common daily-use rentals in the London.

Ok, keep trying. It turns out the clicking “car rentals” in What’s New is the real way to access this functionality. That leads to a much more intelligent rental handling system that walks you through vehicle options, pick-up and drop-off locations and dates, and prices.

Much better - it even had good options for my own tourist backwater of a city, which implies good depth of coverage. Completing the request was a simple matter of selecting options and clicking through “Next” - until PLIBA asked for credit card info.

This is a finicky one: cleary its a good thing to ask for from a provider perspective, to avoide frivolous bookings. From a user perspective, its a bit intimidating, however. Do I trust PLIBA? Do I trust the mobile provider of whatever country I’m in? Are mobile connections “secure?” How about just billing services to my cellular bill (as with ringtones and other goofy downloads) instead?

Cell Phones as Digital Wallets - Carriers as Creditors?

That opens an interesting can of worms on the topic of mobile payment infrastructure, and the evolution of mobile phones as a “digital wallet.” Will carriers essentially become credit lenders, with your mobile account doubling as a credit source? IMHO, with the availablility of services like PLIBA, co-operation between carriers and credit card co’s is inevitable and beneficial. On my ToDo list: find out what goes on with mobile payments in Asia, where I understand the concept is widely deployed already.

Anyway, back to PLIBA. The service makes sense, and once you know how to use it, has great features and provides a powerful tool for mobile usage scenarios. That being said, the implementation is rough around the edges, lacking focus, and (speaking for myself here) difficult to figure the first time. Given that the mobile experience is generally lame to begin with, PLIBA needs to make the first experience as smooth and trouble-free as possible, or risk abandonment.

Ditch the Search Box

My first suggestion for PLIBA would be to ditch the search box. I never did get decent results out of it for any of the variety of searches available.

1. You have great vertical functionality. Surface it as a “Main Menu” instead, by starting with a list: “Hostels, Car Rentals, Restaurants” that leads users into each vertical’s functionality.
2. Doing it that way removes the need to type on my cell’s keypad too, which would be a big relief.
3. This does suggest a strategy of targeting verticals - i.e.: who are your users? Locals looking for a specific restaurant (do they need a search box?)? Or travellers unfamiliar with an area, looking for a type of restaurant (Tapas, for example, mmmmm, hungry)?

There’s a distinct possibility that I’ve missed some core piece of PLIBA functionality in which the search box would be useful, but if I’ve missed it, I’m sure many others would too.

Summary

In summary, PLIBA is at the bleeding edge of an emerging transaction mode, and has put together good functionality to start the ball rolling. Doing so in an evironment where there are no “best practices” white papers floating around is no small challenge, and PLIBA has expected rough edges. I’m looking forward to seeing where the service goes from here.

bookings, cellphone, cellular, micropayments, mobile, online pliba

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