What not to do in mobile web design!

Mobile web design and development should be easy these days. We have iPhones, Androids and Blackberries which make our lives a lot easier. However, some web developers out there really cannot handle the pressure of mobile development and they do wrong big time.

What not to do! Livescore's way.

I am a big football fan. European football fan. Therefore, I use on a daily basis livescore.com. Livescore.com started out offering live score feeds for football games, but they now do that for tennis, hockey and their latest addition, basketball. I just love their site, how it looks, how it works, and every time I am out in a pub watching a game, I need to check out the scores. I do that using my iPhone. But I really don't like to do that. I don't like it because I am redirected to the iPhone (not mobile) version of the site. The design of the mobile version is quite ok, it looks like a iPhone web app, remember those? I don't like it because it is hard to switch from one country to another, see in depth details of some games etc. The iPhone version is kluged with javascript, and it moves really slow! I wouldn't even give a try to this mobile version if I was not obliged to do so. That's right, they do not provide any ways to get to the full site on your iPhone. Whatever you do you're redirected to the mobile version. Moreover, each sliding animation (they use slides for navigation) load twice for each action, not just once.

The only good thing about livescore.com's mobile version is that they do have landscape mode. The mobile version doesn't crack when you tilt your iPhone. They chose a liquid layout which works fine under these circumstances.

What not to do! Antena3's way.

Antena3.ro is the website of a news television in Romania. I only use their live online videofeed while on my mac. Last week while traveling I heard something on the radio and I really needed to check out some details. Therefore, I went to their site, and I was redirected to the mobile version. If livescore.com received such criticism while they provide a working site, Antena 3 is going down!

First of all, try to style that page a bit. I don't like newspapers, that's why I get news via my Iphone guys! Some of you might say that not styling the mobile version means less traffic, and faster loading times. That is true, but if you want that do not place a big add on the top of the mobile version page. I really do not want to win 5 Sony Ericssons.

Under the big ad, they show up latest news. They are displayed as a list containing a title, a small thumbnail, and less than 50 chars of preview from the actual news text. They display the latest 10 news, followed by a categories list, so that you can browse news in the domain you wish for. This is ok, and it also works in landscape mode.

But then, you want to see details, not just titles. Naturally, you click on a headline to see the full article. You get the full article which may or may not have links within its text. I unfortunately found one, and I wanted to see the related article. Guess what happened? I clicked the link, which pointed to the main site, not the mobile version. When the page loaded, I was instantly redirected to the mobile version, but not to the page where the article I was looking for resided. I was taken to the homepage. So basically, you cannot read more than 10 articles. No comment!

Moreover, while navigating through different categories and different titles, I ended up on a page that didn't exist. I was asked to use the menu positioned above, which is in fact on the bottom of the page! I could have gone to the home page or search. While searching for a keyword, I was redirected to the homepage. Didn't the search find any results? I have no idea! Awful user experience.

What to do! Google's way.

When I first tried out Google on my Iphone, I was constantly (every time, actually) redirected to the mobile version of the google search page. However, I wished to access iGoogle as I do on my mac, and unfortunately was not able to do so. I really do not remember how long it took them to do this, but they fixed the issue.

Google now provides their mobile users by default with the mobile version of the site, but you have a switching link in the footer of the site. As you switch from Google in your own language to Google.com in English, you can switch from mobile to standard versions, which I like most. Great. Well done guys!

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Published on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 10:24 pm in design, layout, usability.

About Bogdan Pop

Bogdan Pop is a young Romanian entrepreneur who runs WebRaptor. He is a web developer with awesome design skills, who enjoys writing about everyday's work and usability. He relaxes by taking photos every once in a while and by mixing french electronic music. Connect with him via Twitter.