Keeping it simple in mobile website design

When it comes to mobile website design, simple is best. Because when we’re out and about searching for products or services on the go, we want information at our fingertips with as little delay as possible.

Successful mobile business website design hinges on being as sleek and efficient as possible. The user will favour those sites that provide information and options in the fewest clicks and in the shortest loading times.

Designing and developing for mobile is vastly different from creating sites and online stores for desktops and laptops to browse. Screens are significantly smaller, processors are much slower and memory is much more limited.

This means complex graphics, video and unfitted or overly long textual content are only going to cause headaches for the user and get in the way of a positive browsing experience. More than any other area of ecommerce web design, in mobile design and development less is more.

Limiting content to a single screen (rather than requiring users to scroll and click links in order to view text or images) is a great place to start. Another proven technique is to offer user’s as much flexibility as possible. If, for example, the mobile version of your site becomes compromised by a bug and stops displaying correctly on a phone or tablet, make sure your user is able to toggle back to a standard version of the site.

That way, although the standard version won’t be optimised for their device and will require scrolling and zooming, they can still find the information they want rather than have to wrangle with a malfunctioning mobile site.

When your mobile version is functioning, though, another important thing to consider is the three-click rule. It applies even more to mobile business websites than their desktop counterparts. It’s the principle that no user should have to click more than three links to find the information they’re looking for.

With your mobile site, you should change the three to a one. Ideally, the user should be able to find the information they need to make a buying decision, or to enter contact details, without having to click through to any other pages. But if they do have to, it should only ever be one click away.