Summary

This report is based on usability studies with users in two countries (US and UK), reporting how they actually used a broad variety of websites on a range of mobile devices, including touch phones, smartphones, and feature phones from many vendors. The report also presents the findings from our diary study of users in 6 countries (Australia, The Netherlands, Romania, Singapore, UK, and US) that let us follow user behavior over a longer time period than is feasible in traditional user testing.

The basic finding from this research is that mobile users face severe usability problems in attempting to get things done on today's websites, whether dedicated mobile sites or traditional desktop-optimized sites that are rendered through a mobile browser.

From our empirical observation of real user behavior we derived a set of design guidelines for improving the usability of Web-based content and services when they are used on a mobile device.

> Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox summarizing the report
> USA Today about the study
> See sample page spreads as thumbnails

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary
   • Usability Research
   • The Mobile User Experience Is Miserable
   • Main Mobile Problems
   • Mobile Sites Beat Full Sites
   • Better Phones Perform Better
   • No Progress Since 2000?
   • Mobile Usability Is Hard
2. Research Overview
3. What Do People Do On Mobile Phones
   • Mobile Information Needs
   • Mobile Activities
4. Success Rates: Full Sites versus Mobile Sites
   • Subjective Satisfaction Ratings
5. Success Rates: Does the Phone Matter?
6. Success rates: Historical Comparison
7. Guidelines for Deciding Whether To Have a Mobile Site
   • Mobile Site or Full Site?
   • Mobile site, but Which Device?
   • Application versus Mobile Website
8. Guidelines Discussion
   • Accessing a mobile site
   • What to include on a mobile site
     • Browsers and Searchers
     • Tasks That Should Be Supported on a Mobile Site
   • Homepage
   • Basic Interaction
     • Typing
     • Dropdown Boxes, Buttons, and Links
     • Lists and Scrolling
     • Menus
     • Carousels
     • Forms
     • Logging in and Registering
   • Search
   • Navigation
   • Errors
   • Images, Animation, and Videos
   • Content
   • Maps and location information
   • Shopping
   • Banking and Transactions
9. Methodology
   • Diary Study
     • Overview
     • Participants
     • Method
   • Usability Testing
     • Overview
     • Participants
     • Method
     • Materials
     • Design Review
10. List of Guidelines

What You Get

• Checklist of 85 specific design recommendations: Review your mobile user experence for these 85 items, and you will discover several things that need improvement.
  • The average website typically violates about half of our usability guidelines. You might have the one perfect site in the world that does everything right, but the odds are against you. It is safest to score your design against a checklist of usability guidelines to make sure you don't do anything wrong.
• Description of how users behave when using a variety of mobile sites, including extensive quotes. Learn from the users' comments and reactions to common design mistakes in the sites we tested.
• $175,000 worth of research at 0.1% of the cost.
• The differentiating factors that caused site visitors to successfully or unsuccessfully complete tasks.
• 148 color screenshots with descriptions of why they worked well or caused problems in usability testing.
• Methodology description helping you define the protocol for running your own mobile usability studies.

Who Should Read This Report?

• Responsible for a company's or organization's mobile Internet strategy
• Designing a mobile website or making an existing site mobile-friendly

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