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If Your Website Is Annoying Mobile Users, It's Long Past Time to Fix That
Everyone and their mother have mobile phones in their pockets, but judging by the number of bad mobile websites, it's hard to believe. Is yours one of the annoying ones?
I presented my complaints (read: “ranted”) back in 2016 about how people were getting fed up with websites that were poorly designed for the mobile experience. I fully expected that web designers and business owners would catch up to the tidal wave of mobile users and fix the issues that turn people off. But not everyone got the memo, I guess.
People are still complaining about their mobile website experiences and, apparently, businesses don’t realize the engagement, goodwill, and sales that they are leaving on the table with their annoying designs. The SaleCycle 2023 Ecommerce Stats & Trends Report says that the majority of visitors to shopping sites, around 75% of them, are visiting from their mobile devices, not from a desktop computer. Why would you want to annoy them when they are ready to buy?
Here are the top annoyances that website visitors complain about:
Clicking while trying to scroll
People scan web pages and that means they do a lot of scrolling. The last thing they want to do when quickly whipping through a bunch of text is inadvertently launch another page because of an accidental click. Now you have to stop what you’re doing and correct yourself and who has time for that? Careful placement of link buttons could cut down on these oopsies.
Super small text
If a visitor is not scrolling, then they are reading – or trying to. Unfortunately, many websites have text that is so tiny, that it can’t possibly be read without a lot of pinching and zooming. Bumping up the text size so it can be read for scrolling is so much easier for people to read.
Pages don’t fit on the screen
Since I already mentioned it several times, by now you realize how easy and natural scrolling is. Sliding back and forth to read across a web page is not. Web pages can – and should – be designed so that they look good and work well both on a narrow mobile screen as well as on a wider desktop screen.
Using PDFs instead of web pages
If your information is important enough that you want to share it with website visitors, display it as a web page, not as a PDF. No one wants to read that teeny tiny document on their phone. There are ways to make a PDF more “mobile-friendly,” but whoever is creating your PDF has to start by formatting it for mobile. If you’re going to go to all that trouble, just make your PDF information a proper web page.
As you can see, the main annoyances that website visitors complain about all have to do with the size of the screen. It is a hurdle, there’s no doubt about that, but when the majority of the people who buy your product, come to your restaurant, or sign up for your service are using their mobile phones, you are only hurting yourself by not giving them a positive mobile experience.
You have no doubt experienced these annoyances for yourself, but when was the last time you looked at your own website the way a visitor does? Maybe take the time right now and if you see problems, take the time to fix them. The Sprocket Websites team would be happy to help you if you want. Just give us a call and we’ll talk it over.
Photo by Alex Green
This article is an update to “Ways to Lose Mobile Users - FAST” dated 1/15/2016.
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Breanne Bannon
Breanne is a Content Writer, Social Media Marketeer, and Sales Associate for Sprocket Websites.
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