Let me just state right up front that this isn’t a post that’s going to tell you that mobile websites are important and that mobile traffic is on the up. I won’t bore you with redundant information, but instead I’m going to mention a few things I’ve come across whilst surfing websites on the web that are meant to render for mobile devices but do a shocking job.
So, based on my searching and playing I came up with 5 tips that I feel every website owner should take into account when deciding to build a mobile version of their website.
1. KISS
Keep It Simple Stupid. Mobile devices have small screens, which means website owners have to communicate their message and/or products in a little space. There isn’t room for long descriptions, share buttons and all that nonsense, you want to put your most important information right in front of the visitor. A good idea is to include a search facility, allow the user to navigate to what they’re looking for.
2. SPEED
If someone’s surfing your website on their mobile phone, the chances are that they’re using 3G or Edge. Keep this in mind, there is nothing worse than a slow mobile site. Keep the large images, fancy scripts and involved navigations for your main website, kill it for the mobile site so a visitor can move around quickly.
3. NAVIGATION
This is crucial, a long navigation with bundles of links won’t suffice. You need to select those links that are most important and place them in a manner that your visitor will easily be able to click on them. Dropdown menu’s on a mobile device are a nightmare and so are menu’s with all sorts of fancy jQuery/CSS3 functionality, dumb down your menu’s and think about the end user being able to easily navigate around your mobile website.
4. FINGER FRIENDLY
This is an interesting one, and I only thought of this because I was navigating around a number of sites just a few minutes ago – keep your buttons, navigation items and call to attentions at an appropriate size – pinching to resize the website to click something is unnecessary and will put a lot of people off. Tiny links in a menu placed close to each other often result in visitors clicking the wrong link and landing up on the wrong page, this could lose you a sale!
5. FORMS
Of course, if you run an e-commerce website and you want your users to make purchases on it via the mobile version, be sure to make forms that are easy to use. Filling up long forms on a mobile device is something most people aren’t actually used to, so let’s not make them do that. Keep your forms to the bare minimum and keep them simple and uncluttered. M-commerce (mobile commerce) is getting popular, there’s a gap to put yourself ahead of your competitors here and you can do it by ensuring that the process of registering and ordering is easy.
Initially I was going to go through a number of websites and reflect where they were going wrong, but decided not to as it could have been seen as naming and shaming, and that’s not a read I wanted to go down. So instead, I went through about 30 mobile sites, these mobile sites being the mobile versions of some of the most popular websites in South Africa, some e-commerce and some not – you won’t believe how shocking the mobile sites are, there is a massive gap for South Africans to create mobile websites that really work, and convert.
Now’s the time to get this right!
