Airbnb’s mobile site is now almost as good as its app

Home-sharing startup Airbnb wants you to enjoy its mobile website as much as its redesigned native app.

Although the company’s native app remains a necessary tool for hosts and guests, Airbnb has redesigned its mobile site to make it more responsive and useful for travelers.

“The share of mobile web traffic over desktop traffic is growing — almost 20 percent to Airbnb.com get there via mobile,” Airbnb mobile product lead Justin Santamaria told VentureBeat in an interview. Not serving visitors an optimal experience would be detrimental in a multitude of ways.

Moreover, forcing visitors to download Airbnb’s app when they land on the site via mobile could also be problematic. “Sending someone to an app is more of a commitment to a user,” he said.

Along with other changes, the new mobile site now has an even stronger focus on showcasing available rentals. The redesigned pages include:

• The homepage
• The Weekend Getaways page
• The discovery experience
• The inbox and messaging

In the future, Santamaria’s team plans to use the mobile site as a place to experiment before making changes to the company’s native apps. The new mobile site will roll out globally over the next month.