It is all good if your mobile site is Search Engine Optimized but what if your mobile site is not compatible with most mobile phones? What if your mobile website is hard to navigate and no one can find anything on your mobile site?
Find below 10 tips on what you should avoid for a mobile website. This was taken directly from:W3C mobile web best practices
- User friendly structure: Keep the navigation structure simple. Remember that people will be using their mobile browsers to browse your mobile website and having a complex structure will make sure the user won’t return. Content should be easily accessible.
- Keep the graphics simple: Never use graphics for spacing purposes. Don’t use large images that loads slowly. Mobile pages should not exceed 10kb in file size.
- Pop-up Windows: Never use pop-up windows informing the user.
- Image Maps: Most mobile phones does not support image maps. Do you want to enable features on your mobile site that is only compatible with a few handsets?
- Frames: Frames for normal and mobile websites are recognized as being generally problematic. With mobile browsers frames are not compatible at all.
- Color: Ensure that the background and foreground color combination provides sufficient contrast.
- Tables: Tables does not work well with limited screen sizes. Never use nested tables.
- Cookies: Most mobile devices does not support cookies. Never rely on cookies with your mobile site.
- Fonts: Mobile phones often has limited support for font sizes and mostly only bold, size and italic is supported.
- Input: Avoid text input directly. Provide pre selected input options where available. Keep the keystrokes from the mobile phone keypad to a minimum. Use selection lists, radio buttons and checkboxes instead.
This is just 10 tips on what you should avoid with the development/designing for your mobile website.