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Don't leave mobile users outside - 30/08/2010
In the last 5 or 6 years, companies which value their internet presence have realized the importance of having websites that work well in all web browsers that are available in the market. In this period, companies have invested into rebuilding and adapting their websites in order to deliver not only to Internet Explorer users, but also Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera users.
This shift happened when companies relized that their consumers weren't getting a good experience whenever they visited websites through all the different browsers that we know today and would eventually end up looking for other sites, often those of the competitors which were better prepared.
Today, these same comoanies need to pay attention to a new change that is happening at full force on the internet. The number of users who access websites through mobile devices in the world is very significative.
According to a study that has been recently published by Morgan Stanley, the number of users who access the internet through mobile devices is around 800 million. This impressive number includes mobile phones, smartphones, MP3 players with internet access, e-readers, tablets, GPS, games, among others.
The projected growth in this study shows that before 2015 there might be more people accessing the internet through mobile devices than through personal computers.
For mobile device users, the experience of accessing a website which hasn't been appropriately prepared is extremely bad. There are many kinds of impairments: reading difficulties, inappropriate screen width, delay in displaying the page, contentents that cannot be displayed (such as Flash), links that are hard to click.
In this link, you will find some examples of large worldwide advertisement agencies websites, when accessed through a smartphone.
Just like a few years ago, when companies invested to adapt their websites to work across many borwsers, today they can't leave mobile internet users outside; that is, if they don't want their consumers to end up navigating to websites of their competitors who have already taken that important step.
In order to make this move in an efficient way, the mobile websites have to go through usability tests with real users: those who are used to mobile internet as well as those who are inexperienced but might adopt this technology in the future. This is the only way companies can be sure to offer their consumers the best experience.
Fernando Oliveira
Usability Expert
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