UX Matters: Ten Ways Mobile Sites Are Different from Desktop Web Sites

Designing mobile sites is all about context and limiting choice (really, not much different than designing a regular website). This article from UX Matters points out 10 ways designing mobile websites are different than designing for a computer.

However, the design of mobile sites is still in its infancy. As Jakob Nielsen's 2009 study on mobile usability pointed out, users' success rates when using mobile devices to access mobile sites averaged only 64%, which is quite low in comparison to the 80% average success rate for users who access Web sites on a computer. The form-factor difference seems to have a dramatic impact on the success rates of users' interactions, and therefore, should impact how we design mobile sites as well.

New principles and best practices will inevitably arise as mobile site design continues to evolve. As a first step toward achieving this evolution, I've looked at how some successful mobile sites already differ from desktop Web sites. Based on my analysis of several verticals, including airlines, ecommerce, social networking and entertainment, and travel sites, I have identified 10 ways in which mobile sites should be different from desktop Web sites.

Read on…