Tucson, Ariz., July 23 — Imagine someone marching into your office, pulling a giant plug and announcing, "There — I just cut your website traffic by 13 percent!" In fact, most companies are already doing this to themselves by not offering content optimized for the mobile web, prompting Simpleview to offer free mobile websites to every one of its destination marketing organization (DMO) clients.

The time is right “Simpleview has long offered our customers fee-for-service development for mobile communications,” says company CEO Ryan George, but it was the surge in mobile web use last year—up 28 percent Q1 year over year—that signaled it was time to bring the mobile channel to his DMO clients in a big way. "Millions of people are looking up travel information on their phones, either because they're visiting a new city, they saw a billboard promoting a mobile site, or they got the bug to research a vacation while talking with a friend over lunch," explains George. "Today it may be a few million — and that's traffic that DMOs are missing out on if their sites aren't mobile-friendly," says George. "By this time next year, that number is guaranteed to be substantially higher. Our job is to make sure our clients stay ahead of the game and if a DMO isn't going mobile right now, it's falling behind."

Rolling out critical content 
Simpleview announced the gratis development of mobile sites for all simpleview customers in April at its annual CVB Summit, a four-day educational event in Tucson combining technology training with sales and marketing strategy seminars. The first rollout offers mobile-optimized pages for a DMO's most critical website content: industry partner listings, which contain detailed information about regional businesses like hotels, restaurants and attractions, ranging from apple orchards to zoos. Updates including adding a DMO's press releases and events calendar to the mobile sites are around the corner, and simpleview continues to offer application development for more advanced mobile applications, including special offers, mapping tools, and automated SMS text marketing. 

Who's online on the go?
According to Nielsen Mobile, the mobile communications divisions of The Neilsen Company, mobile web extends the reach of leading sites by 13 percent over desktop web use alone; and if you think only teens are surfing by phone, think again. Last summer, the count of U.S. residents paying for mobile web services topped 95 million — roughly 1 of every 3 people — and mobile web use sees a 48/52 split between users under/over the age of 35, with nearly as many 55+ users as teenagers.

Partnering with mobiManage
By partnering with Tulsa-based technology provider mobiManage, Simpleview was able to meld the content feed for the new mobile sites with its existing solution set, a web-based, fully integrated system for web and print content management (CMS), sales, customer relationship management (CRM), email marketing, revenue generation, forecasting, reporting and business analysis. mobiManage created the first content management system that is fully compliant with the unique challenges and limitations of the .mobi internet domain. The company continually monitors new phones/PDAs and the changing landscape of mobile web, adjusting its codebase as needed to optimize content for access on mobile devices.

About Simpleview
Inc. magazine ranks Simpleview #2 among the fastest-growing, privately held U.S. companies in the travel and tourism sector. Since 1991, the company has maintained a 99% client retention rate while capturing the largest market share in its field, helping 125+ destination marketing organizations (DMOs) get the most out of technology, the web and interactive marketing. At the highest level, Simpleview develops big-picture strategies for DMO sales, marketing and operations. On a tactical level, they offer integrated products and services tailored to destination marketing: dynamic websites and content management, search engine optimization, interactive marketing services, social media management, design, content and multimedia production. To date, the company’s Web-based destination management system has driven $6.8 billion in economic impact for its customers, which includes destinations ranging from New York City to Portland, Oregon, Boston to Jacksonville, Toronto to the Bahamas. simpleview employs 60+ people in Tucson, Arizona and San Diego, California.

About mobiManage
mobiManage offers a turnkey service for developing and hosting mobile website applications that makes it easy to create a mobile website that is immediately ready for access. Their MobiWeb Development Platform allows general web users to create and launch mobile websites in a few hours and includes a content manager, making it easy for site administrators to update content on mobile websites. Since the introduction of their development platform in September 2008, clients have used it to create and host 200+ location-specific mobile websites.

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