Summary

This report is based on 8 series of usability studies with users in 4 countries (mostly the US, but also Australia, Hong Kong, and the UK), reporting how they actually used a broad variety of websites and apps on a range of mobile devices, including touch phones and smartphones from many vendors. The report also presents the findings from two diary studies 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, whether on websites or through native apps.

> Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox summarizing the report
> USA Today about the first study

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary
2. What's New in the Second Edition
3. Research Overview
4. What People Do On Mobile Phones
   • Mobile Information Needs
   • Mobile Activities
5. Success Rates on Mobile Devices
   • Success Rates: Full Sites versus Mobile Sites Versus Apps
   • Success Rates: Does the Phone Matter?
   • Success rates: Historical Comparison
6. Mobile Strategy Guidelines
   • Should You Go Mobile?
   • Application Versus Mobile Website
   • What to Include On Mobile
     • Who Your Users Are
     • What Your Top Tasks Are: What You Should Support on Mobile
     • Content that Should Be Included on Mobile
   • Mobile Sites
     • Do Users Prefer Full Sites or Mobile Websites?
     • Mobile Site, But Which Device?
     • Accessing a Mobile Site
     • Designing a Mobile Site
   • Mobile Apps
     • Differences Between Mobile Platforms for Apps
     • Making Your App Findable
     • What to Include in a Mobile App
     • From Desktop to Phone
7. Principles of Mobile Usability
8. General Guidelines for Mobile Websites and Apps
   • Homepage
   • Typing
   • Dropdown Boxes, Menus, Carousels
   • Forms
   • Logging in and Registering
   • Search
   • Lists and Scrolling
   • Navigation
   • Content
   • Readability
   • Images, Animation, and Videos
   • Icons
   • Errors
   • Maps and Location Information
   • Shopping
   • Banking and Transactions
9. Feature Phones
10. General Guidelines for Touch Phones
    • Targets: Size, Placement, Affordance
    • Gestures
      • Horizontal Swipe
      • Tapping and Content
    • Orientation
    • Input
11. Guidelines for Apps
    • Immersive Apps
    • Input
    • Modal Dialogs and Alerts
    • Registration and Log In
    • Notifications
    • Tab Bars and Tool Bars
    • Task Flow
    • Progress Indicators
    • Instructions and Help
    • Initial Experience
    • Hybrid Apps
    • Physical Buttons on Platforms Other than iOS
12. Methodology
    • Diary Studies
      • Overview
      • Participants
      • Method
    • Usability Testing
      • Overview
      • Participants and Devices
      • Method
      • Materials
    • Design Reviews
    • List of Guidelines

Comparing the Editions

If you already own the 1st edition of this report, should you buy the 2nd edition?

Probably yes, because there have been many changes in the mobile space since the 1st edition. For example, the research for the new edition included Android and Windows Phone devices. Also, our knowledge about mobile usability increased dramatically between the two editions, so the new edition contains much more information. Finally, the new edition covers apps in addition to sites.

(You might think that we always try to upsell people to new editions, but that's not true. We often advice against buying newer editions, if they are mainly in the nature of updates with a relatively small number of new findings. See, for example, what we say about the 2nd edition of the Corporate Image report.)

Comparison of the editions:

What You Get

• Checklist of 210 specific design recommendations: Review your mobile user experience for these 210 items, and you will discover many things that need improvement.
  • The average user interface design 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 and apps, including extensive quotes. Learn from the users' comments and reactions to common design mistakes in the sites we tested.
• $400,000 worth of research at 0.07% of the cost.
• The differentiating factors that caused site visitors and app users to successfully or unsuccessfully complete tasks.
• 479 color screenshots from a very wide variety of mobile sites and apps 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
  • intranet strategists will also benefit, even though no mobile intranets were tested for this report
• Designing a mobile website or making an existing site mobile-friendly
• Designing applications for mobile devices

Please help us continue publish low-price reports by buying a site license if you have colleagues who will read the report. If somebody "gives" you a copy, then please buy a download anyway to keep prices down in the future. Remember that we don't get any grants or outside support for our independent research, so we depend on your honesty in buying the report to generate the funding for further work.

Download Report (from eSellerate) $298 for the PDF file with a single-user license (293 pages) $598 for site license to make copies

> Mobile User Experience 1: Usability of Websites and Apps on Mobile Devices

> Mobile User Experience 2: Touchscreen Application Usability

> Visual Design for Mobile Devices and Tablets

> Writing for Mobile Users: Content Usability for Mobile Websites, Apps, and Email Newsletters

> Mobile Usability Methods: How to Run Your Own Mobile User Studies

presented at our annual Usability Week conference.

These courses are also available for in-house presentation at your company.