Mobile users are very goal-oriented. They expect to be able to get what they need, immediately, and on their own terms. There are several design principles that must be considered if one is to create a successful mobile website. Key in all this is keeping User Interface needs in mind, so that going through your website never feels like a chore for the user.
Homepage and site navigation
It’s often very useful to keep everything that needs to be “instantly clicked” front and center, as soon as the page is opened. This includes external links, images of the latest products, and menus.
Speaking of menus, it would be advisable to add these to the navigation bar of the website, so that the home page isn’t cluttered up. This would help make all of your users’ most common tasks easily available. Make sure that they’re short, sweet and can be easily navigated. Include an option in the homepage that, no matter where on the page the user is, they can click a button to go right back to the top. It would be a good idea to have this function on all pages of the site.
If you are an e-commerce website, site navigation for all your products would be quite important. Users will browse your site and then add items to a cart as they go along, buying at the end. To buy, you will need personal details from them; card number, email etc. The question arises, how to structure this?
Strategically, most people will turn away from a site that gets them to become a member in order to access it. People that buy frequently from a site may not want to become members either, to free their emails from potential spam. Plus, going through lots of products would be a nightmare on a smaller screen without organization. Thus, establishing a “2 items at a time” grid system, or something similar, would be integral to make the user interface easier to navigate. In addition, allow customers to browse without being members, and purchase as guests. If they wish to receive frequent updates, they will join your subscription. It will make things easier for your web traffic. A great e-commerce website to learn this from is Starlinks, with their SEO and web design services displayed prominently on their site.
Responsive Web Design
Having a responsive web design means that the webpage layouts can change based on device characteristics, as well as the content. This is essential if you wish to run your website for PC users as well as mobile phones. For example, on high resolution (2x) displays, high-resolution graphics can give assurance in regards to sharpness of image quality. An image that is 50% width might be okay when the browser is 800px wide, but it would need to be reduced depending on the size of the browser, which will certainly change on mobile.