Banfield, The Pet Hospital, is a business so enamored with its 2 million four-legged patients that it capitalizes the letter "P" in "pets" on its Web site, in its e-mails—and now on its new mobile site. The Portland, Ore.-based business with locations throughout the U.S., U.K. and Mexico looked through its analytics and noticed that more than 5,000 clients of the two-legged variety were using mobile phones to access Banfield.net.
Rather than just creating a mobile version of its Web site, Banfield looked to its Portland neighbor, e-mail marketing firm eROI, in the third quarter of 2009. Lisa Yaccino Rogers, Banfield's marketing programs manager, says that Banfield had been working with eROI for years before tapping the firm to create its wireless application protocol (WAP) site. Banfield.net/mobile launched in January 2010.
When creating the mobile site, Banfield considered how cell phone users were already using the main the site and what Banfield's long-term mobile marketing goals would be. Site analytics showed most mobile visitors were seeking location or contact information. So for the mobile site, Banfield scaled down its "Hospital Locator" option that requests users to plug in ZIP codes and a search radius in miles, or pick a state. The next page shows a list of hospitals, phone numbers, addresses and links to Google Maps and driving directions.
Three pages of content fit Banfield's long-term goals of selling its veterinarian services and pet care plans, as well as recruiting employees to the more than 2,000 vet business. Banfield also kept the mobile site appearance consistent with that of its main site, including the same logo and fonts.
From Feb. 1 to April 8, Banfield's mobile site has had 69,037 visits, 58,189 of which were unique. Organic search is the main traffic source, with direct, third-party site referral, paid search and e-mail referrals following in descending order.
“The nice thing to see in looking at content [analytics] is that the 'find-us,' or hospital locator feature, is being highly used—with low bounce rates,” Yaccino Rogers says. “So people are obviously using the locator to find or contact our hospitals, which was our primary goal. Secondarily, they are using the site to access info about our Optimum Wellness Plans, which are core to our business, and they are spending some time with that page of the site.”
Here, Yaccino Rogers explains more about Banfield's mobile site.
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