Usability expert Jakob Nielsen recently published an article titled 'Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998' in his Alertbox about the state of web sites when viewed with mobile phones and other portable devices. It does not make for pretty reading.

Major factors were:

• Abysmal task success rates
• Slow download times
• Problematic scrolling
• Bloated pages
  

The main problem for developers is that whilst most desktop computers have relatively stable screen sizes and input devices (keyboard, mouse), in the mobile world there are about as many different screen sizes and input devices as there are mobile phone models. On top of this, many mobile users don't know how to use it properly when it comes to surfing the web on their phone. All of these make a website designed for a PC a nightmare to use on the mobile.

There were three classes of mobile phones identified during Nielsen's usability tests:

• Regular cell phones with tiny screens. They offer very poor usability, but make up over 85% of the market
• Smartphones with mid-sized screens and an A-Z keyboard. These generally offer poor usability.
• Full-screen phones (eg iPhone). These also offer sub-standard usability but are the best of a poor bunch.
  

From the usability testing Mr Nielsen recommends the following mobile web strategy, depending on the funds available:

1. The best solution is to design different websites for each mobile device class or, better still, offer downloadable mobile applications
2. If that is not possible, then there should be two mobile sites: one for regular phones and one for Smartphones and full-screen phones.
3. However for many sites the only real option is one mobile site targeted at the higher end devices as it will in any case serve low end devices poorly.
   

Finally, before even offering a mobile version of your website, it is worth noting whether this is even necessary. Most users only perform a limited set of web based tasks on their mobiles. If your website is unlikely to be used much by mobile users it is worth simply creating separate stylesheets for mobile phones and avoiding the worst pitfalls for mobile users.

We would be very  interested to hear your views and experiences of using mobile phones on the internet. Please contact us as via our contact form.

Links:

Jakob Nielsen - Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998