Web Usability Blog

Web Usability has recently invested in a state of the art mobile testing rig and eye tracker. This allows us to observe exactly what users are looking at when using a smartphone or tablet.

We have recently been looking at testing websites on mobile devices. While most sites are still in Jakob Nielsen's 3 classes of mobile user experience i.e.  horrible, bad or impoverished, where site owners have taken the trouble to develop mobile sites they can be quite good (e.g. BBC, Facebook, Google Maps, etc.) However, to have an effective mobile website, usability is only half (albeit an important half) of the story.

Really interesting set of stats about the growth in web access from mobile devices in the USA from comScore, a market intelligence company. Key facts were:

We have recently conducted some user testing on of one of our client's websites on mobile devices. They sell investment products so it was largely an information site. It was a fascinating exercise in many ways, but what particularly surprised me was how different users' behaviours were when using their mobiles to browse the web.