7 Usability Guidelines for Websites on Mobile Devices

By Abid Warsi
2008-01-30

5. Only show essential information

Mobile phone screens are of course tiny and have only a fraction of the area or pixels on most PC monitors. Be sure to identify page requests coming from mobiles and only send down the most essential of information. Otherwise, important content might be pushed down or difficult to find amongst everything else on the page.

Also, most mobile phone users aren't on flat rate data packages so the larger the page the more users have to pay. Users become frustrated if they have to pay to download page content they don't want.

Header links on the BAA and Thomson Local websites take up lots of screen space and make important information hard to find. 'About BAA', 'Help' and 'Advertise with us' aren't priorities for mobile users.

Screenshot of Thomson Local Screenshot of BAA

Unnecessary content pushes down Thomson Local's search box and BAA's main content below the fold.

Tutorial pages:

Introduction
1. Meet users' needs quickly
2. Don't repeat the navigation on every page
3. Clearly distinguish selected items
4. Make user input as simple as possible
5. Only show essential information
6. Place basic browsing controls on the page
7. Design mobile-friendly page layouts
In a nutshell

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