As smartphone and other mobile users are frequently accessing the internet, it has become mandatory for businesses and bloggers to design a mobile-friendly website to cater to mobile users effectively.
When it comes to mobile web designing, the site design should be able to incorporate elements of comfort and ease in exploring the site for mobile users. However, web designers tend to make some common mistakes mostly due to their ignorance or lack of skills and experience in mobile web designing. Their mistakes make the site design fragile and leads to poor mobile user experience. So, while designing a mobile website, you should be aware of such mistakes and avoid doing them for your site.
Ignoring the device's screen size
The mobile device's screen width is much smaller than the desktop's. So it is important not to ignore the screen size and the width of smartphone and other mobile devices when drafting the layout of your mobile website. Your website's width should support the small screen of mobile device.
Improper spacing of clickable links or icons
When using a desktop, we use mouse clicks for every function. We're able to easily click on a 16 x 16 icon and the process is too simple.
A mobile user, on the other hand, uses fingers as the tool for navigation and control. Webmasters do not consider these things while designing a mobile-friendly site. They tend to ignore the user's fingers while creating the mobile site layouts thus their designs are not compatible with touch screens. When trying to accommodate everything within a mobile screen, they tend to reduce the size of functional buttons. Since the minimum acceptable size for clickable targets or objects on touch screens is 30 to 40 pixels, the links or icons shouldn't be placed very close to each other. According to the Windows Phone UI, these elements need to maintain a distance of 8 pixels in your mobile site designs, which designers often ignore. Also, not everyone has the fingers of same size, so what works well for small fingers may not perform well for someone with large ones. So, by proper spacing of clickable targets, you will avoid frustrating users.
Adding too much of text
People visit your site because it is more interesting and informative to them. They also want to access the information as quickly as possible. Trying to transfer everything that is on your website into a mobile layout makes your web design look crazy for mobile users. You can do some modifications such as reducing the number of items in the menu, deleting any content that is unimportant, and simplifying the text size to a readable level. It is recommended to arrange the layout by using bullets or creating small paragraphs. Also, don't forget to place a link at the bottom of the page that allows the readers to browse the web-version of your site.
Visual overload
The mobile users don't have that much patience or time to wait for the slow loading websites when compared to the users surfing the web from their desktop screens. Hence, while designing mobile friendly sites adding too many animations, heavy images or visual elements, which consumes time to load, should be totally avoided. However, you can add only optimized images. But don't ever try to upload small images as they create the same dilemma as that of the heavy graphics. By doing this, you can improve the readability of your site.
Having long user-input forms
For mobile users, their device keyboard is not as user-friendly as the desktop ones. Many web designers while adding the forms over the mobile sites forget to consider this fact and perform the things in the same old format by adding large amount of data in these forms. You need to prompt the user to input data only into necessary fields. Sometimes, users may not have much time to type into all required fields. To simplify their task, you can add combo boxes, radio buttons, lists or check boxes.
So, if you are able to avoid these mistakes while designing any mobile friendly website, your user's mobile experience will be much better and focused.
About The Author: Gianna is a writer/blogger. She loves writing about technology, gadgets and social media.
Did you find this article helpful? Please let Gianna and myself know by leaving us your valued comments.
Would you like to guest post on the blog? Please use the Contact tab above to get in touch if you write business-related articles or articles on the topics of Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Social Media Marketing/Optimisation (SMO), Blogging, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
Related articles:
Five Keys To A Successful Web Design And How You Can Achieve It For Free
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Until my next post on Monday with six tips for improving your customers experience, have a fabulous weekend!
© 2013. This article is DMCA protected. Republication is prohibited.
When it comes to mobile web designing, the site design should be able to incorporate elements of comfort and ease in exploring the site for mobile users. However, web designers tend to make some common mistakes mostly due to their ignorance or lack of skills and experience in mobile web designing. Their mistakes make the site design fragile and leads to poor mobile user experience. So, while designing a mobile website, you should be aware of such mistakes and avoid doing them for your site.
Ignoring the device's screen size
The mobile device's screen width is much smaller than the desktop's. So it is important not to ignore the screen size and the width of smartphone and other mobile devices when drafting the layout of your mobile website. Your website's width should support the small screen of mobile device.
Improper spacing of clickable links or icons
When using a desktop, we use mouse clicks for every function. We're able to easily click on a 16 x 16 icon and the process is too simple.
A mobile user, on the other hand, uses fingers as the tool for navigation and control. Webmasters do not consider these things while designing a mobile-friendly site. They tend to ignore the user's fingers while creating the mobile site layouts thus their designs are not compatible with touch screens. When trying to accommodate everything within a mobile screen, they tend to reduce the size of functional buttons. Since the minimum acceptable size for clickable targets or objects on touch screens is 30 to 40 pixels, the links or icons shouldn't be placed very close to each other. According to the Windows Phone UI, these elements need to maintain a distance of 8 pixels in your mobile site designs, which designers often ignore. Also, not everyone has the fingers of same size, so what works well for small fingers may not perform well for someone with large ones. So, by proper spacing of clickable targets, you will avoid frustrating users.
Adding too much of text
People visit your site because it is more interesting and informative to them. They also want to access the information as quickly as possible. Trying to transfer everything that is on your website into a mobile layout makes your web design look crazy for mobile users. You can do some modifications such as reducing the number of items in the menu, deleting any content that is unimportant, and simplifying the text size to a readable level. It is recommended to arrange the layout by using bullets or creating small paragraphs. Also, don't forget to place a link at the bottom of the page that allows the readers to browse the web-version of your site.
Visual overload
The mobile users don't have that much patience or time to wait for the slow loading websites when compared to the users surfing the web from their desktop screens. Hence, while designing mobile friendly sites adding too many animations, heavy images or visual elements, which consumes time to load, should be totally avoided. However, you can add only optimized images. But don't ever try to upload small images as they create the same dilemma as that of the heavy graphics. By doing this, you can improve the readability of your site.
Having long user-input forms
For mobile users, their device keyboard is not as user-friendly as the desktop ones. Many web designers while adding the forms over the mobile sites forget to consider this fact and perform the things in the same old format by adding large amount of data in these forms. You need to prompt the user to input data only into necessary fields. Sometimes, users may not have much time to type into all required fields. To simplify their task, you can add combo boxes, radio buttons, lists or check boxes.
So, if you are able to avoid these mistakes while designing any mobile friendly website, your user's mobile experience will be much better and focused.
About The Author: Gianna is a writer/blogger. She loves writing about technology, gadgets and social media.
Did you find this article helpful? Please let Gianna and myself know by leaving us your valued comments.
Would you like to guest post on the blog? Please use the Contact tab above to get in touch if you write business-related articles or articles on the topics of Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Social Media Marketing/Optimisation (SMO), Blogging, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
Related articles:
Five Keys To A Successful Web Design And How You Can Achieve It For Free
If you found this or any of my other posts helpful, don't forget to share the posts to your favourite networks using the toolbar below or by using the "+1" and "Share" buttons located at the bottom of each post.
As ever, if you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on NetworkedBlogs, via Email (maximum of one email per day), on Facebook and Google+ or by subscribing to our blog feed at:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DereksHomeAndBusinessBlog
You can also follow me on Twitter @djones1509, Google+ and on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/djones1509
https://plus.google.com/104849975941505117776
Until my next post on Monday with six tips for improving your customers experience, have a fabulous weekend!
© 2013. This article is DMCA protected. Republication is prohibited.
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