Jakob Nielsen Says Mobile Websites 15-Years Behind for Usability

It is neither easy nor pleasant for people to use the Web on their mobile phones, according to a report released today by user-experience research firm Nielsen Norman Group. In usability studies conducted in the US and UK, researchers found that the average success rate for users completing tasks on the mobile Internet was 59 percent compared to an average success rate of 80 percent for websites accessed on a regular PC.

"The phrase 'mobile usability' is pretty much an oxymoron," said usability expert Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman Group. "Observing users suffer during our user sessions reminded us of the very first usability studies we did with traditional websites in 1994. It was that bad."

Not counting poor cellular signal, researchers identified four main obstacles that mobile users face to getting a good user experience:

• Small screens: When users see fewer options at any given time, all interactions become harder to do;
• Awkward input: Text entry is particularly slow and error prone, even on phones with mini-keyboards, and it is difficult to operate GUI widgets without a mouse;
• Download delays: Getting to the next screen takes forever, often longer than it would on a dial-up connection;
• Mis-designed websites: Sites optimized for usability under desktop conditions, meaning they don't follow guidelines for mobile access, create all kinds of additional obstacles for mobile users.

"The first two problems are inherent to mobile devices, and as for connectivity, it's going to take many years before mobile connections are as fast as even a modest cable modem. The key opportunity for improving the mobile user experience lies in websites being designed specifically for better mobile usability," said NN/g user experience specialist Raluca Budiu, lead researcher for the study and co-author of the study, Usability of Mobile Websites.

When test participants used sites designed specifically for mobile devices, their success rates averaged 64 percent compared to the 53 percent success rate they experienced when using "full" sites on their mobile phones, in other words, the same sites offered to PC users. User performance could be improved by 20 percent by creating mobile-optimized sites.

Nielsen Norman Group's research combined three usability methods for the study of the mobile Web: user testing, diary study and a cross-platform review that looked at 20 sites and six different phones.

Posted to the site on 20th July 2009