The New York Times ran an interesting critique of the mobile Web yesterday. Michael Fitzgerald identifies some of the major obstacles to mass-market adoption of mobile websites, including the following items.
- Inconsistent user interfaces on mobile devices – new users have difficulty finding the address bar and bookmark features. Fitzgerald fails to mention that, on some mobile devices, the font sizes are too small for most older users to read. Managers, who make media placement and Web development decisions, tend to fit an older demographic than their customers.
- Poor formatting on small screens – RIM, Google, Bloglines and other service providers include reformatting and filtering technology in their mobile portals, but many web sites do not resolve well on a small screen.
- Lack of support for Flash – as more Web sites adopt Adobe’s Flash technology for animation and other features, Web developers often fail to provide a low bandwidth or text only version that will work well or at all on a mobile device.
- Slavish duplication of the desktop web model – this can also be seen in Microsoft Windows Mobile, which includes a Start button as a key part of the user interface.
For the most part, I agree with him – but I still use the mobile Web every day to check Gmail and read other web sites. The mobile Web isn’t a smooth experience yet, but it’s better than toting around a full computer, as my previous post about the US Census suggests.
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