Principles of Mobile Site Design: Delight Users and Drive Conversions | Hacker News Reader

Principles of Mobile Site Design: Delight Users and Drive Conversions

google.com

48 pointstwapi11 comments

26. Never ask users to download an app to do what they could do on your website.

27. Your mobile and full sites should have similar layouts, so users used to one won't get lost on the other.

28. Content/functions on your main website should also be available on your mobile website. Otherwise, users will search for things that aren't there and become very, very, angry.

29. Avoid using popups as they are harder to close on mobile devices. (Really, you shouldn't be using them on your desktop site either.) It is especially dumb for popups to ask a user to fill out a survey on their satisfaction with your site before they've started using it.

30. Switching to the full site should be easy and obvious. Do not attempt to thwart this functionality.

#9 Explore before they commit -- is truly ironic given the experience of going to G+ on any mobile device.

#10 Purchase as guest -- dittos -- allow for anonymous (or unauthenticated) transactions.

The principles are actually pretty good, but it's clear Google's left hand doesn't know what its right it suggesting.

Presentation giving some sort of error for reaching the download limit of non-Google Docs format presentations.

I would assume that Google has a way to remove that limit for their own usage, right?

I'd like to propose a 26th principle:

Don't place a bandwidth limit on files that aren't in google docs format.

Ok so it's loaded now.

I just tried it on my iPhone. This has to be the least mobile-friendly blog post I've seen in a very long time.

Cool, always glad to read an article on design from a company that barely understands it.

I love that those of us who give a shit about the users can use the mobile trend to push good user-centric design on otherwise unwilling marketing weasels. I just wish they would stop pretending it is in any way unique to mobile users. Almost all that stuff is just ordinary "give the user a site that doesn't suck", and applies to any user, regardless of the device they are using at any particular moment. "Make your menu simple" and "give relevant search results" and "don't put up registration walls to prevent your users from giving you money" have been well known for over a decade. Take this opportunity to push good web design for your entire site, not just for mobile users.

Most of it reads as Jacob Nielsen 1998. You're quite right.

One of the things I actually like about mobile websites (done right) is that they make for better desktop websites: they take away all of the cruft far too typical of the latter and get straight to business.

Someone should make a point of taking mobile redesign as a launching point for desktop redesign.

That's what the mobile first approach is about.Get rid of the fat and focus on what matters.

It doesnt always work though,sometime user facing sites have complex requirements that just dont make sense on mobile,you often need 2 versions with a complete different UI.

Yet i dont believe in a high rate conversion on mobile web(phones). native apps often work better when it comes to ad or even ecommerce. Especially when "in app" purchase is just one click ahead.

I realize you can't get rid of everything (and sometimes mobile sites cut too much), but there's very few sites which can't go on some diet.

I've written CSS rules to modify over 1000 sites in the past year, and while the modifications are often minor, the busier the site, the more likely I'll simply strip out elements -- asides, headers, and footers are very likely to get killed, leaving more space and prominence for primary content.

Yes, I could use Pocket or Readability, but they work an article at a time. This fixes the site for good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com