What are the greatest design sins for business websites?
That was the question we asked an associate who is an online professional with Amazon, one of the top 5 tech companies in the world.
1) Treating mobile as an afterthought.
You should be mobile-first.
Why?
Customers are mobile-first.
2) Not providing feature parity or at least near feature parity to desktop.
Why?
Customers are mobile-first they increasingly try it on their phone and if they can’t find it they go somewhere else or try on a desktop.
3) Thinking an “m.” is good enough.
You should have both mobile web and mobile app experiences.
Why?
Mobile web reaches more potential customers. Mobile app is where you drive engagement.
4) Thinking that mobile means phone.
Why?
“Mobile” represents the customer behavior that information is always accessible. Your “mobile” solution should support me on whatever device I access from whatever place on whatever bandwidth I have available.
5) Too much distraction, crowding, wordy.
Why?
K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid), because I’m doing other things while I’m doing this mobile thing also.
6) Latency.
Why? Don’t assume slow is ever okay. If you are slow the customer is gone.
7) Not recognizing when I have your app already installed.
I have to be able to launch it properly and seamlessly.
8) Too much of your own pitch.
Instead of serving “me” as the customer and what I am looking for.
9) Not placing the word “menu” next to the hamburger menu icon.
HUGE increase in site navigation if you just do that one thing.
10) Not collecting and looking at your session data.
Why?
If you are not measuring your mobile performance you can’t intelligently improve your design.
11) Not prototyping and testing your designs on “real people” before you launch.
You should always test the design on a handful of participants BEFORE you launch.
Why?
Having 6-12 “customers” attempt to complete a core task in a simulated prototype can expose up to 80% of the problems in that experience. This can literally save you business.
12) David Letterman style.
Not designing a mobile solution in the first place.
Will you repent of your web design sins and heed his advice or ignore it?
Only you can answer that question.