Mobile web experience: could do better

People are increasingly using the internet on mobile devices and companies need to provide an equal user experience for visitors accessing their online information in different ways.

However, a recent Gomez/dotMobi report says that mobile web performance is getting worse (in the airline, banking and search industries at least): there’s an increasing gap between ‘traditional’ and mobile websites, with the former getting faster and the latter getting slower.

Are two websites better than one?

Many organisations (such as Vodafone) are producing two websites: a ‘traditional’ one for PCs and another version for mobile browsers. This is generating a lot of discussion in the industry (including among accessibility professionals) regarding the need for – and wisdom of – separate websites.

The arguments are wide ranging, from making the same content available to everyone (without forcing people with different browsers to use a different version of a website) to providing a good user experience across all devices.

It also raises issues of doubling maintenance efforts (and therefore costs) as well as ensuring content is consistent and up to date across both sites.

Mobile performance criteria

The Gomez/dotMobi study looked at the mobile web experiences provided by leading companies in the three sectors, across major wireless networks. It measured:

availability – making sure customers get the information they need, when they need it
response time – how quickly visitors can access content and perform tasks
consistency – consistent user experiences, no matter where they are
discoverability – how easily customers can find a mobile site from various URLs
readiness – making sure the mobile website renders as intended on popular devices

American Airlines, Bank of America and Amazon ranked highest among the selected companies in their respective sectors (Google wasn’t included because its mobile web application “did not meet the technical requirements for benchmark participation”).

What are the roots of the problem?

Gomez says that despite consumers’ high expectations for mobile web experiences, quality experiences continue to be a challenge for many businesses. The company says that this should be a concern for both brand managers and technical teams.

I’d be interested to know what the study team thought were the main causes of these performance issues: bloated code, poor navigation and content that’s not fit for purpose, for example? Of course, this is common to all types of websites; not just mobile ones.

The majority of these issues could begin to be addressed by following standards and accessibility guidelines. Sites that do often perform better, make maintenance simpler and decrease related costs. In addition, effective use of CSS can also avoid the need for separate websites for different devices.

I’d be curious to know how some of the other corporate sectors perform, those that aren’t as consumer facing as the three chosen for this study. If anybody’s aware of any reports, let us know.

Mobile websites…or not?

Twitter has been buzzing about Jakob Nielsen’s latest Alertbox newsletter, in which he says:

“To solve the problems [users experience on mobile devices], websites should provide special mobile versions.”

My initial thought was that it makes sense in some cases. This is from the perspective of corporate, not e-commerce, websites, because this is where my experience lies.

Does it depend on audience need?

While mobile users may wish for the same experience as other users, for some audiences (such as investors) it comes down to wanting access to business-critical information as quickly as possible.

If this is via a simple site with limited navigation, then surely the minimal investment makes sense? An example is the Rolls-Royce dedicated mobile site, which has been around for some years.

Accessible websites already cater for mobiles

However, I’m not an expert in this area and it’s been interesting to read others’ opinions, especially in relation to accessibility. A particularly good article was posted by Iheni (and she should know, because she IS an expert), who basically said absolutely not:

“To me this just extends the problems of walled gardens for users and leads developers down the road of additional and unnecessary work.”

She goes on to highlight the overlap between the W3C’s Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), as discussed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). If a website is accessible, by default it should be practically device independent too.

Corporate websites have more pressing issues

So, if companies’ sites complied to accessibility best practice, in theory mobile users would have fewer problems. I now wonder if some businesses might think that providing a separate site for mobiles would relieve them of some of the responsibility of creating more accessible websites overall?

Although as Graham Charlton at Econsultancy says, perhaps they should ‘improve the usability of their main website[s] before even thinking about mobile’.

I think this debate will run and run, and I’m going to follow it with interest.