By 2000, an Internet presence had become such a baseline business requirement that anyone who announced one seemed hopelessly behind the times. Maybe that's why no one makes announcements about mobile versions of their sites: we're all behind the times.
In a recent speech on the future of the Web, Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee told his audience that poor page design is one of the main reasons the mobile Internet (at least as the vendors have envisioned it) hasn't transpired.
"Web designers have learned to design for the visually impaired and for other people," he said. "They will learn in a few years how to make Web sites available for people with mobile devices, too."
You have to wonder what's taking so long. My best explanation is that too many companies believe that the mobile Internet would simply be an extension of the original, not seeming to understand that it's a completely different surfing experience. "Surfing" may not even be the best word to describe what people do when they access the Web on their cellphone or PDA. Just as few of us dial phone numbers at random, most mobile users use their devices for specific purposes. Last month, for example, after my flight back from San Jose was unexpectedly cancelled, one of my colleagues had the bright idea of using our time in the long lineup to flip open his iPaq and check Air Canada's Web site for possible alternatives.
As we get better at measuring usage patterns, Web designers will realize it doesn't make sense to create a home page with half a dozen buttons that visitors may or may not click on. In many cases, the design should be centred around the most common transactions, limiting the need to scroll through more than, say, three options. There may even be a case for the return of splash pages, which have no business on most regular Web sites but may help guide an online experience once we have become more educated in our assumptions about navigation.
The worst thing companies could do is follow the example of record companies, who have for the most part failed to respond to the creative challenge of the CD. Anyone who still owns vinyl records will marvel at the complexity of some album covers--like Sergeant Pepper's, for example. Faced with a smaller canvas on CD cases, most music collections now feature a simple image of the artist's face (think any Mariah Carey album) or images that look like logos (the heart- shaped grenade on Green Day's American Idiot).
Enterprises need to pull back on their branding if they want their mobile sites to succeed. Most likely, their traffic will be generated from customers who are already familiar with their brand, and simply want to extend the business relationship in a mobile context.
Thorough usability testing is a rarity among many Web designers. Mobile usability is a subset of that field which seems, so far, to have been inexplicably ignored. The companies that get cracking on this today will enjoy a significant opportunity to gain share and loyalty from grateful customers who can finally get some mileage out of their mobile computing investments. As for the other firms? Well, maybe they can send out a press release.
Shane Schick is the editor of
