Mobile usability differs from desktop usability in a number of ways. The screens are tiny, making it difficult to view text and graphics used on a standard desktop.  Apart from the iPhone, only one page can be displayed at a time. Error-prone data transfer is slow and not only do people have short attention spans, they often want the information urgently. Input methods, too, are awkward even on newer devices.     

Admittedly, today’s XHMTL mobile web sites are a vast improvement on the original WAP sites with improved interactivity, graphics, and type support. The technology, though, does not yet offer the functionality for consumers to shop online via the mobile web in a desirable manner. What mobile phone-based XHTML browsing does provide is a separate space for global users to achieve specific, time-based goals.

Mobile and desktop users often have different reasons for visiting the same site. Mobile users are more likely to be seeking critical information to achieve a predetermined goal; for example, travel directions, online flight check-in, booking a restaurant table or finding the nearest location of a high street retailer.

To the right are two examples of mobile sites. KLM.mobi is excellent, because it focuses on what the traveller wants: to check in, to get last minute flight information, etc. Benetton is less so, as why would the visitor want a big welcome to the mobile site? Let’s take the attention away from the technology and provide a store finder with hours, or photos of the latest collections... I hunted around for WAP sites for Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, John Lewis, even Carphone Warehouse, and none had WAP sites. Companies would benefit from having basic access information available to consumers in order for them to do business.

The key to designing sites optimised for mobile web access is to define your business objectives and understand your target audience’s goals for accessing your online proposition. Determine the qualities of your audience using personas based on analysis of user, task, environment profiling, and demographics.

To bring these personas to life, you need to create scenarios to research what, where and how people want to access information. Are they walking, sitting on a train, in the car? These scenarios should tell a set of stories that show how users would use your application and what decisions they must make to accomplish their goals. These stories should make sense to you as marketers, your web developers and, most of all, your users.   

As part of your design strategy, identify any technical constraints in the information architecture. The web pages can be produced initially without visual treatments and then demonstrated on a real phone to ensure they are mobile-friendly. When testing for usability, ask representatives of your target audience to perform tasks according to your scenarios. This will ensure that user research drives any changes.

If advertising is to be an element, consider where to integrate ads into the content. Mobile web banners (run at the top of the page), mobile web posters (banners at the bottom of the page), and SMS advertising are commonly used. Placing ads in the middle of a mobile web page encourages users to scroll to the bottom of the page and can contribute to the ‘stickiness’ of a mobile website, but make sure there isn’t too much white space above or below the mid-page ad, to prevent confusion about whether the page ends at the ad... You really want people to get to the bottom of each page, so include something fun there, like another destination, bit of news, or interesting graphic link to other content.

There’s no doubt that the latest iteration of smartphones enables interactive applications and faster web browsing. These 3G phones, however, represent the high-end, consumer mobile market. Instead of trying to deliver every capability, companies would do better to adopt a customer-driven approach by creating content and functionality with specific mobile users in mind.