Most users browse the internet through their mobile devices nowadays but still, a majority of the websites have not yet completely optimized their site for mobile or adapted a mobile-first design. If the desktop version of your site was doing well till date which made you ignore your mobile site, then you need to be prepared to lose business as your customers are also shifting to their smartphones to browse through the internet.
We have listed below 7 negative mobile user experiences that can wreck your business;
1. Sliders Which Do Not Slide:
Using sliders on the website is a very popular element as it looks attractive, but the problem starts when this slider does not function well on phone screens. You must have seen sites where the scroll arrows are placed such that nothing happens when you tap on them hence you cannot see the next image.
These sliders look amazing on the desktop but when you view this on a small screen, the image gets truncated, and the text becomes so small that you will find it difficult to read.
Of course, you can use a slider but make sure that the design looks right and legible on the phone. You can also set the slider to scroll automatically after a minimum of 6 seconds so that the users need not struggle to go to the next slide.
2. Long Forms:
Long forms are irritating to fill on desktops itself, but it gets worse when such forms need to be filled through mobile phones. The keyboard of the phone is already small and screen space is less hence filling forms can become frustrating. And by chance you forget to fill in a field, you will have to start again, therefore, stick to basic fields which are absolutely mandatory and skip others.
3. Links That are Not Legible:
Adding link text on the site which is so small that it becomes difficult to tap on it can be a hassle for the user to use the site. The only way to make this easier is by adjusting the size of the fonts and the links so that it is easily legible and can be tapped conveniently to visit the link.
4. Mandatory Sign-up to Access Content:
Asking users to sign-up the site is not going to work as no one has that much time to create a new account unnecessarily and if you allow the use of google sign-in for ease, still many users would prefer not to do that because of safety reasons and may drop your site immediately. Make it easier for the users to access your content and do not put such mandatory sign-up steps.
5. Pop-Ups:
Pop-ups look as such bad when you see them on desktop screens as they block your view but imagine a pop-up appears on your phone, what could be worse. Pop-ups block the screen and hide the content which makes the site look unreliable. Subscription pop-ups still can be justified but advertisements popping-up is going to make your site ranking crash as users leave such sites assuming these are spams. The only pop-up that you should use on the mobile site, that too at the bottom is displaying your privacy policy and asking users permission to use their data as per the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect user data privacy.
6. Unfamiliar Controls:
Designing an unusual website only makes the site difficult to use. If a user does not find a standard element on the site where it should ideally be placed and needs to search for it, then it already is annoying but imagine doing it on a mobile browser where the screen space is so small that the entire process can get on your users’ nerves resulting in a high bounce rate. A few things are meant to be left alone such as the navigation and the search options hence just place it where it should be which is the top of the page.
7. Ease of Searching the Site:
Missing out on small elements to make the user experience better such as auto-suggest in the search can be the making or breaking point since the screen size is limited, and the keyboard is small which makes it difficult to type. Even we love this feature on our search engines hence think of your site as a search engine for the users and provide them with ease to search the site.
In Conclusion:
The advice which experts impart today to any web designer is to build a mobile-first design which works better on smartphones than desktop as the number of users switching from desktop to mobile to browse the internet is exponentially rising.
