What Is Your Mobile Website?

We’re becoming more and more mobile these days. Yes, I know, I should try myself in “The most obvious thought of the day” or something like that. We’ve already moved out old-school thick clients to websites available from any browser on any computer. Next step is already there and these are our mobile phones.

We don’t carry our laptops everywhere and even if we do it’s not always convenient to use them. On the other hand you can operate typical mobile phone using one hand while standing in crowded bus.

For those who are still there loosing their last hope I actually might have something to tell which is at least a bit less evident – thank you for support. I’m going right to my point. Usability.

You have your website (whatever it does). Think why mobile users come and how they interact with the website. Company’s home site? They rather won’t come here from their phones. Newsy site? Chances are quite good. On-line game? A sure shot. Some kind of niche search engine? Again, mobile users will be there.

And when they are, what do they see? A fully packed 500k page? Scrollbars both on the right and on the bottom? Pictures? Or rather a simple page with limited information but delivering content fast.

News? Headers are enough in most cases. You won’t find many amateurs of complex reports read on mobile phone out there. On-line game? You should go for basic operations, possibly those users have to execute very timely. Search engine? Easy access to search box and light-weight easy-to-scroll result list. No pictures please. Content has to be adjusted to the device it is accessed from.

And another thing, probably even more important. Navigation. Forget mouse steering. Forget even keyboard-driven approach. Now you have 12 buttons to rule them all. Entering accounts and passwords becomes a pain in the ass. Standard shortcuts are useless as you neither have Ctrl nor O (to open something in that example). Positioning and order of links becomes crucial part of your design. The world of 320x396 display and 12-key keyboard is just different.

I think the most interesting case we have above is on-line gaming. There are a lot of games now, which base not on World of Warcraft or Second Life model (thick client and on-line world somewhere there), but can be accessed from a web browser as a client. Usually the key thing there is coordination of actions you do. E.g. the match is played every day at 6 pm or you have turn every day to build something in your empire or your character’s action points regenerates slowly over time etc.

I’ve heard stories about people setting up their alarms on 3 am just to gain some advantage over other players or asking their friends to perform some action when they couldn’t be on-line. With easy interface on your mobile users can play everywhere and always. The only prerequisite is usability of mobile app. Users can’t spend half an hour for an action they’d complete in a minute while using “adult” browser.

If I was creating an on-line game now I would start from mobile interface and then go into classic browser.