As the designing of websites has gone increasingly mobile, today’s web design services are faced with a huge challenge. They need to create a website design that is functional as a desktop site while increasingly usable, all within the confines of the small smartphone or tablet screen. Most of these businesses have become pretty good at doing this; unfortunately, there are still some glitches in many mobile websites that prevent good usability. Is your website turning mobile users away in any of the following ways? If so, your competition is probably thanking you.
- Slow Loading Pages - Possibly the biggest problem with mobile websites today, and the fastest way to turn away users, is with a slowly-loading site. Designers have about seven seconds to grab a viewer’s attention. If a site does not load in that time, most people are already moving on to the another page that will.
- Hidden Menus - The second most frustrating thing that mobile users often have to deal with is hidden menus. When a user cannot find an easy way to navigate a site or locate important links under hamburger menus, they cannot accomplish what they came to do.
- Cluttered Site Layout - In the fight for viable mobile real estate, web design services must use available space for what is essential to promote proper use of the site. Social media icons are almost useless on mobile sites and can usually be left out.
- Not A Mobile-Friendly Layout - Responsive web design was invented to solve the function and usability problems that smartphones and tablets created. When web design services do not use a fully responsive, user-friendly mobile website design that is capable of responding to all resolutions, on a variety of devices and platforms, the problem remains unresolved.
- Non-Tappable Phone Numbers - One of the best inventions for mobile website design is linked phone numbers. This is a great convenience and an aggravating issue when phone numbers are not actual, active call numbers. Help users by providing a simple way for them to call, or risk losing that call.
- Taps Too Small -The challenge in mobile website design is to fit more into less space. Unfortunately, this challenge makes it easy to shrink icons, text, and tappable links too much, making them difficult for most people to use.
- Disabled User Select Function - Since the focus in mobile web design is on convenience and easy use, the user select function should not be disabled. Copying lines of text is much easier for users when they want to share or search for something and the inability to do so may lead them away from a website in search of more cooperative options elsewhere.
- Non-Zooming Sites - Tappable links that are too small is problem enough; zooming at least gives the user a way to get around this. Disabling the zoom function on mobile sites prevents viewers from using the site at the resolution they need to, further increasing the chance they will become frustrated and leave if they cannot read or make the page work.
- Hidden Content - Whether content is covered by an ad, a popup to download an app, a cookie consent notification, or something else, it basically stops the viewer from reaching the content. Consider different design options for advertising.
While these are only a few of the ways that mobile web design can sabotage the user, they are some of the most common and frustrating ways. In creating the best user-friendly mobile website design, today’s web design services must consider how the importance of these seemingly insignificant problems and avoid them. Although the goal is certainly to fit more things to use into less space, functionality is still the key!
