How to improve mobile web usability?

Mobile internet use and mobile shopping are becoming increasingly popular, however, there is a need for major improvements in order to improve the customers’ satisfaction. According to a study carried out by Econsultancy only 9% of respondents believed that the customer experience offered on their mobile channel was good.  The “Reducing Customer Struggle” report states that the poor customer service reflects a lack of investment in mobile for many companies because they are failing to see it as a valuable channel. Only a third of respondents said that mobile internet was relevant for sales (30%) and contact or service (32%).

One of the biggest reasons that users perform poorly on mobile devices is speed. Even people with fast smart-phones are bound to encounter situations where their device is just too slow. Other relevant factor is the screen size; it is very challenging to fit so much information in such as small screen.

About 30% of these mobile phone owners (more than 700 million and growing) have browsed the Internet through their mobile phones. It’s forecast that by 2013 there will be more than 1.7 billion mobile Internet users worldwide. With the number of mobile users increasing constantly and mobile shopping becoming popular, there is good reasons to believe that mobile web browsing will become the next predominant Internet platform.

Browser limitations would not be such a big issue if sites had mobile variants that worked on different kinds of mobile browsers. Unfortunately, a lot of sites do not have mobile versions.

How to improve the customer experience?

One of the main steps to attract mobile users is to design website for mobile devices. Mobile websites can be built through using Wireless Markup Language (WML) which is a markup language intended for devices that implement the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) or XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP) that is a hypertextual computer language standard designed specifically for mobile phones and other resource-constrained devices.

There are an increasing number of web design companies providing these services however there are some points that need to be taken into consideration when building a mobile website.

•    Design websites specific to the mobile devices that you target. Knowing the screen dimensions helps you optimize some of your content; however it’s best to keep the shape and style of your site as minimal and linear as possible.
•    Check how your current site looks in mobile devices in www.skweezer.com.
•    Ideally you should provide different information not just because the screen is smaller but also because the needs of mobile users might be totally different. For instance, a mobile user searching for a restaurant in the middle of a city might want to go for a dinner immediately whilst the desktop user might be browsing for the near future. 
•    You can add a specific sub-domain to your site (mobile.yourcompany.com). This could be very helpful if you would deliver other content to mobile users than you would for desktop users.
•    Mobile browsers are another factor to consider. Mobile websites should be suitable to different browsers.

•    Give the users the option of visiting the standard site.

To provide an alternative CSS stylesheet for users with mobile devices, insert the following code in the head of an HTML document:

To overrule some objects have that have to be treated differently for browsers on handheld devices the following code needs to be added into your CSS code.

Things to avoid in Mobile Websites

•    Do not fill the site with detailed information.
•    Do not use objects that have a fixed size, like tables.
•    Do not scripting languages, flash or other complex objects.
•    Do not use objects that have a fixed size, like tables.

Get ready for the boom of mobile e-commerce!

Google has unveiled new features and technology to speed up mobile web searches. The company spokesperson has said that traffic coming from mobile devices such as smart-phones has increased by a factor of five during the past two years.

Content management systems such as Sitecore, Wordpress and are already providing mobile CMS websites with great results. Are you ready for this new digital challenge?